


Queen of Wonderland

by Queenspuppet



Series: Wonderland Is Where It's At [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Added Fantasy Elements, Awesome Darcy Lewis, Darcy Lewis-centric, F/M, Fluffy Angst, Hacker Darcy Lewis, Magical Funeral, Not Carroll's Wonderland, Orgies on a Hill, Other, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Whimsical Brothels, searching for family, smutty smut smut, somewhat canon compliant, waterfall sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-10-14 14:52:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 54,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10538733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queenspuppet/pseuds/Queenspuppet
Summary: "I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole - and yet - and yet - it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life!" - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis CarrollDarcy Lewis can open the Door.





	1. Answer The Door

_Ba-DUM. Ba-DUM. Ba-DUM._

 

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

 

_Ba-DUM._

 

_Knock._

 

_Ba-DUM._

 

_Knock knock knock._

 

_Doo-de-doo, do-de-do-de-dooo, do-de-doo…_

 

_KNOCK KNOCK._

 

The body next to her groaned and buried itself under scratchy hostel blankets and flat pillows until Darcy was left naked on the narrow mattress, listening to the chorus of phone alerts and knocking.

 

 _I have to stop bringing home strays_ , Darcy thought, groping blindly at the floor for some combination of glasses, underwear, and the phone.

 

Little black spider emojis littered the screen. She didn’t have a contact in her phone that was a little black spider, as far as she knew. But she’d also set her phone to silent six months ago when Jane had taken off with Thor, leaving Darcy behind with a monthly stipend and no expectation of when she might be back.

 

 _Ba-DUM_ , the JAWS themed bleated. _Knock knock._

 

“I hear you,” Darcy said to the floor, giving up on her underwear and settling for leggings and what she supposed was her bed companion’s button-down.

 

“Then answer the door,” a voice said from the hall.

 

Darcy stumbled around the bed, her body tilting to the left and her stomach swaying to the right. Her glasses were on but her eyes were still full of crust and she was beginning to suspect that whatever she’d had to eat in Wonderland last night might not have been meant for human digestive systems. She bounced off the wall and managed to catch her hand on the door knob. It took a few tries. The first time the door was locked - and hey, good job to her for remembering to lock it when they got back last night. The second time she just didn’t try _hard_ enough to turn the knob.

 

But then the door was open and Darcy was digging the crunchy flakes out of her eyes from underneath her glasses and an attractive, diminutive red-head was studying the dark-skinned, bare leg that was dangling out from under the covers on the bed with interest.

 

“Agent-” Darcy started, when she realized who was standing in the hall, but she trailed off because she wasn’t really sure _what_ to call the woman.

 

The red-head blinked, and her lips quirked at the corners. “Not anymore,” she said, and then offered, “Natasha.”

 

Which…just…Darcy wasn’t sure she was ready to be on first name terms with the Black Widow.

 

“How’d you get your number into my phone?”

 

“Shut. Up,” said the… somebody in the bed. Darcy couldn’t remember his name. If he’d even offered it.

 

“I have breakfast waiting for us downstairs,” Natasha said.

 

There was a intrigued little noise from the bed so Darcy slid her feet into the shoes she’d kicked off near the door and wiggled out of the room before she had to see yesterday’s poor choices in daylight. If there was a merciful God, aside from Thor - _please_ let Thor be as unaware of the details of Darcy’s last six months as she was of Jane’s - then the Traveler would wake up and find his way to his next Door without another hello or goodbye to Darcy.

 

The sex had been lousy.

 

Natasha Romanov led the way down the narrow hostel staircase, passing a skittering cockroach making its way bravely up a wall, and a narrow window opening that revealed the brilliantly blue old city of Jodhpur and the wonderful smells of spice and sewage and incense and charcoal. Darcy’s eyes watered and, strangely, her stomach rumbled.

 

The men working in the lobby frowned and stared as Natasha and Darcy passed them to the courtyard sitting at the heart of the hostel. The Black Widow looked alright in loose, dark green linens that covered her neck to toe, but Darcy was instantly regretting walking out of her room in leggings and a men’s dress shirt. She folded her arms protectively over her bra-less chest and tucked her head down, ignoring the way her tangles snagged under the collar of the shirt. It had seemed wisest not to make the Black Widow wait outside of her door any longer than she’d already forced her to. Now it was seeming wise to run back upstairs and find a way to sneak out of the hostel and to the nearest Door.

 

Not that Darcy really thought she could out-sneak Natasha Romanov…but if she could make it to the Door _before_ Natasha-

 

There was a familiar snort as they approached a table and Darcy looked up to find Clint muffling his laughter under a hand half-mummified by super hero themed band-aids.

 

“Hey kiddo,” Clint said, standing and passing the dark jean jacket draped over the back of his chair into her hands.

 

It helped, a little, although she was going to end up overheating if they were outside long enough for the sun to hit courtyard.

 

“Thanks bird-brain,” Darcy said, because it was a bad idea to be too grateful to Clint for any reason. He liked to call in favors you never promised.

 

“Eat,” he said, un-offended, and flipped open a handful of takeout boxes.

 

There were cheese massala omelets, and mawa kachori, and deep fried battered peppers stuffed with potatoes, and three large styrofoam cups that looked to be full of mango lassi.

 

“Come to mama,” Darcy sighed.

 

Jodhpur was definitely killing it on Darcy’s list of favorite food places. (Most places were killing it and the list was deeply disorganized.)

 

A couple of eyebrow, lip-tilt, nose-twitch looks were exchanged between Natasha and Clint and Darcy realized that the feast she was arranging in an arch around her seat at the table was probably some kind of bribe. But the sweet nutty smell of the kachori pastry was curing the woozy feeling in Darcy’s stomach and she was _not_ above being bribed.

 

“You’ve been hard to get ahold of, kiddo,” Clint said after taking a noisy slurp of his lassi.

 

“My phone _was_ on silent,” Darcy allowed before taking a huge, and extremely hot, bite of the stuffed pepper. She breathed through her full mouth for several beats, Clint watching with avid amusement and Natasha seemingly searching the sky for answers. Probably wondering how she’d ended up at the table with two such uncouth people.

 

“You coulda come stay with Laura and the kids after Jane left,” Clint said.

 

“You mean because I’m a degree-less, jobless, twenty-something, who is legally obligated by global security to remain a useless tag-a-long to people who could find more qualified assistants if the one they currently had didn’t already ‘know too much?’” Darcy asked.

 

“Bitter much?” Clint asked, eyebrows raised. A kachori hung half-way to his mouth, forgotten during Darcy’s rant.

 

“Yes. I am very bitter, Clint,” Darcy said slowly and clearly. She glanced at Natasha but the woman was only watching her in return, face clean of expression other than mild interest. So Darcy went back to her pakora.

 

“Heyyyy, kiddo,” Clint started.

 

“Don’t fucking start with me, Clint,” Darcy said, trying not to spit potato back at him.

 

Clint was a good dude, really. He and Laura had let Darcy stay with them in the past when the Powers-That-Be had sent Jane to something or other that they didn’t want ‘someone like Darcy to jeopardize.’ But he was the world’s first - or maybe second if you asked Captain America - best marksman, not to mention actually pretty good at being a spy when he wanted to be. Darcy wasn’t gonna buy his ‘I relate to your struggle’ sympathy speech.

 

“We need your expertise,” Natasha said.

 

Darcy met the woman’s gaze and swallowed hard. She narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out the spy’s angle, because no way was she gonna just go ‘Oh. Yay! I am valued!!’ just because Natasha Queen of Deception Romanov called her an expert in something.

 

“You can order wooly scarves off Etsy if it’s cold on whatever mountain you Not Avengers are hiding on,” Darcy said. Then she hoped to god Natasha didn’t decide to just shoot her in the head for daring to sass. Clint would probably try to protect her, cause he really like the Hufflepuff scarf she knitted for him last winter, but her money was totally on the Black Widow in a fight between the two.

 

Natasha smiled and Darcy thought, _Oh god. I’m dead._

 

“Look, Darce,” Clint said, “Maybe three years ago when SHIELD was standing we _wouldn’t_ be coming to you. But SHIELD fell for a reason, and you are trustworthy. Everyone agrees on that. It’s like one of six things that we all agree on. We need someone who like…can find the dark web or-”

 

“Oh, man, please do not use tech terms, Clint, you are so bad at them,” Darcy said.

 

“We only have a handful of people who have more than a cursory understanding of communications,” Natasha said, “and I’m one of three with experience in coding which is something you excel at. I need to be in the field and we need you to come in. At least while Foster is off world. We are sorely lacking in man-power.”

 

“Woman power,” Darcy mumbled, eating another kachori.

 

This was probably, actually, true. She could guess at the people who were available to the Stark-free team of superheroes, and they were mostly…well…superheroes. Front line people. Shields and guns and wings and muscle. Darcy _was_ a back-stage person. And she was good with code, if hacking SHIELD could be considered ‘good.’ (It could be considered amazing, if she was being honest with herself.)

 

If Clint and Natasha had turned up in the Badlands just after Jane had left Earth - giving Darcy three-days notice and her monthly stipend and no invitation to join her in universal travel - Darcy would not have hesitated in going with them. Of course six months ago Clint was in an underwater prison and Natasha was making diplomatic-nice with the Accords. Darcy was, understandably, not their concern.

 

Darcy was at that time, as she discovered, no one’s concern. Erik was Erik’s concern, which okay, that was fair, mental breakdown and all. Ian’s concern was finding an internship that paid, and no, Darcy wouldn’t be invited along as _his_ intern. She was an orphan with no family, and the last time she’d spoken to any school friends had been before the Elves attacked Greenwich and a stack of non-disclosure forms as tall as her waist.

 

Then she found Wonderland.

 

It wasn’t always great. It definitely wasn’t always _wonder_ ful, despite what she called it. Although when it was, it was amazing in a way that stole Darcy’s breath and superimposed itself on every magical moment she had witnessed thus far, every quaking terror she had felt, every ecstatic, toe-curling, spine-tingling pleasure she’d felt. The eighty percent of time spent there that was either slightly odd or eerily disturbing or vaguely amusing became the pathways to the extraordinary moments that bent space around her and left her thoughts melting away and her nerves expanding endlessly.

 

But she wasn’t giving _that_ as an excuse to not follow Clint and Natasha wherever they wanted to take her. Wonderland was a secret, her secret. It wasn’t an idea of Jane’s that needed researching. It wasn’t a threat to Earth that needed battling by Thor’s hammer. And even if Wonderland wasn’t just hers - it belonged as much to the Traveler she’d left sleeping in her hostel bed as it did to her - she’d spent as many days there traveling blissfully alone as she had in wandering parties with other Travelers. It was a part of her now, imprinted on her skin.

 

“Darce,” Clint prompted.

 

She couldn’t ask where they would be going. She knew they wouldn’t tell her even if she was so trustworthy. Who knew if she would find a Door there, if there even was one. She might be giving up the single thing that defined her as someone _special_.

 

“Let me get my things,” she said.

 

They let her leave the table alone. Not that Darcy thought they weren’t keeping an eye on her. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t even sure what her plan was as she jogged up the stairs to her third floor closet-space cum guest-room with a bed big enough for one and a half people if they slept at an angle.Was she leaving with Clint and Natasha or was she going to race them to a Door only she could open?

 

The room was empty aside from her things. The Traveler had taken off already. Which was what she wanted. To not have to make awkward conversation with a stranger, all sex aside. To carry on in her pattern of exploring the world she lived in and the strange and fantastical dimension she found open to her.

 

She packed her bag.

 

She would go back to Wonderland, look for an adventure or another Door. Not even Natasha Fucking Romanov had the means to chase Darcy from one Door to the next when she didn’t have a way through them. So she would find somewhere new, like Stockholm or St. Petersburg, or go somewhere she’d already been like Normandy or Portland or back to the beginning in Bangkok. And then move again in a day or two. Like she’d been doing. As long as she didn’t end up back in Antarctica.

 

Antarctica sucked balls.

 

She’d actually gone and gotten the part of the map that led to Antarctica tattooed over with a big red circle with a slash through it… it just figured that part of the map landed on her ass. She’d narrowly avoided having to show the tattoo artist the entirety of the Wonderland map that was growing daily across her skin. Cul-de-sacs curling around her elbows, web like intersections spreading over her thigh, a tidy grid at the center of her back with one long highway running up her spine, all in delicate black lines and carefully written non-sense names that Darcy attached to the places the roads took her. She didn’t know why the map was there, scribbled by unseen hands onto her flesh as she stepped over a threshold, but it was useful. And it hadn’t reached anywhere that wasn’t easily covered with discreet clothing. Darcy almost dreaded the day that she might leave Wonderland with a road map seemingly tattooed on her neck or, perish the thought, her face. She hadn’t actually met a Traveler with a face tattoo yet though, so the concern might have been moot.

 

Darcy’s bag was packed and over her shoulder and she was halfway to the room’s window that sat just over a roof that she probably wouldn’t break anything jumping down to, when she caught sight of a flash of dark blue denim in the small square mirror sitting tilted on the wall. She was still wearing Clint’s jean jacket.

 

She froze in place. Her stomach, still pleasantly full from the breakfast, sank to the floor and her heart squeezed in her chest. Darcy sighed and pivoted in place, turning back to the door. Running to Wonderland felt like running _away_ and that was an irritating notion that was probably going to stick with her and ruin any good mood she managed to find on the other side of a Door.

 

And she was starting to wonder if she was maybe a little lonely.

 

She hurried back to the courtyard before she could change her mind again and found the two spies sitting at the table and sipping their lassis like they hadn’t been the slightest bit worried about Darcy taking off. Which was… irksome.

 

“You could have gotten dressed,” Clint said, smirking.

 

“Let’s just go,” Darcy said, trying very hard not to regret the decision.

 

 

 

**Five months and seventeen days earlier**

 

Dogs were barking in a pen to Darcy’s left, chasing each other in circles. She’d asked about them at the hostel she’d checked into and the loose explanation given, as far as she could tell in the broken english, was that these dogs had mange and were being kept away from all the other dogs wandering the back streets of Bangkok who didn’t have mange…yet. It kind of made her want to cry.

 

A tuk-tuk brushed past her in the narrow alley road, the drunk tourist sitting in the cart managing to swat her on the ass while the driver tsk’ed and sped away. The men in garage space that was spilling out gears and tires and engine parts, who’d been watching her for the last ten minutes, laughed from their lawn chairs as Darcy flipped off the tourist in the tuk-tuk. The garage dudes seemed okay…from across the alley, but she was getting increasingly aware that she was a young woman alone in a not especially populated area of a city known for it’s sex-trafficking.

 

It was time to nut up or shut up, Darcy decided.

 

Except that she didn’t really know _why_ she was here.

 

She knew that Jane was gone, for now. She knew that Ian wasn’t really that great when the world wasn’t ending. And okay, she’d known that before he left for Chile last week. She knew that Tony Stark didn’t want her help. She’d asked and he said ‘I don’t need someone to get me coffee, I don’t drink coffee.’ Dick. She knew that Captain America had bigger problems to deal with than a bored and under-utilized intern. She doubted he knew what an intern actually was.

 

She knew that she’d had this location written on the inside of her left arm, near her elbow, the day she’d been found in the waiting room at St. Mary’s Hospital, two months old.

 

13°46'00.9"N 100°29'53.2"E

 

It was in her welfare file. She’d known about it since the day she turned eighteen. But at eighteen she had a scholarship to Culver University and very little else. And at twenty-two she’d had Jane and alien invasions and shady government agencies and THOR AS A FRIEND. And then, suddenly, at twenty-six she’d had a set of GPS coordinates memorized in the hopes that it might hold some secret truth about herself, a modest monthly stipend that she was bound to burn through at this rate, and no one to talk to.

 

So here she was. In the automotive district of Bangkok, Thailand, while a peanut gallery of mechanics who apparently had nothing else going on with their day watched as she tried to figure out what the hell she was going to do now that she’d blown all but two-hundred dollars of her monthly stipend with two weeks to go and _zero_ answers.

 

Was this where she was conceived? Did she have a relative living above one of these shops? Was she going to just start crying in front of a pen of mangy dogs and a garage of men who would probably just watch and laugh at that too?

 

Probably.

 

_Knock knock knock._

 

Darcy swallowed the little sob that had been crawling up her throat and looked at the door sitting in a blank wall just a ways to her right. It was painted gold and had a pretty gold handle in the shape of a rose. It was very out of place in the neighborhood of garages and nondescript plaster walls.

 

_Knock knock knock._

 

Darcy blinked. Who knocked from the inside of a door? She took two steps closer and then paused, staring at the rose handle. This seemed like the kind of place where you might find one of those sex-slave dens everyone was always talking about when a college girl mentioned wanting to go to Thailand.

 

Maybe her mom had been a sex-slave in Thailand.

 

Although that didn’t explain how she ended up in a hospital in rural Illinois.

 

_Knock knock knock._

 

 _Fuck it_ , Darcy thought, stepping up, one hand fisted around her taser in her hoodie pocket and the other reaching out to turn the handle.

 

The door swung in, and a breeze that smelled like cotton candy and beeswax swept over Darcy, cloying and heavy to the point that she brought her arm up cover her nose and mouth while she caught her breath. A tall, good-looking man with short blond hair and watery green eyes stood on the other side, smiling.

 

“Hej,” he said.

 

“Hey,” Darcy said, glancing over his shoulder and the room that stretched on behind him, full of leather-bound books stacked up to impossible heights, and gaudy flowers growing in waterfalls off shelves and out of trees.

 

“Jag var rädd att ingen var där,” he said.

 

“What?” Darcy said, tearing her eyes away from the nonsensical place behind him.

 

He laughed and seemed to think before saying in an uneven tone, “Did not know who would answer. You going in?”

 

“I-” Darcy paused. She wasn’t going in. Was she?

 

 _This is why you’re here_ , she thought.

 

Of course it was.

 

“Yeah,” Darcy said. “Going in.”

 

“Kay,” said the man, still smiling. “Have fun.”

 

They brushed past one another in the doorway and Darcy said, “Thanks, dude.”

 

And the door clicked shut behind her.

 

 

* * *

 

_AN: This is currently ~~fairly unbeta-ed because I am an impatient little nutjob with no chill~~ beta-ed by the amazing JanetSnakehole who is my bae as well as beta. She is magic and her fic is hella yummy and I owe her pie milkshakes all over the place._

_Swedish Translation...okay yeah, full disclosure I don't remember EXACTLY what I typed into the translator but basically Swedish Dude is like "I was afraid nobody was gonna answer this door" which you know, anyways, translators suck and that's probably not what it says._

 

_I also apologize for disappearing for like...a year. Things happen, and I'm sure I am not alone in the happening things.  But I love you and hope you forgive me and enjoy what's to come. <3QP_


	2. Honey This Will Be Your Future

**Five months and sixteen days earlier.**

 

She hadn’t even _meant_ to eat the book.

 

It was her waking thought. Right before a large, flat black tongue covered in bristles wiped its way up the back of her head through her hair.

 

“Ufghhhhf,” Darcy complained into the soft, furry pillow she’d been sleeping on.

 

House cats the size of bears sounded like a really awesome idea. Until they started trying to clean you and mother you and carry you around by your hoodie. Or until one of them hacked up a hairball right next to you while you were sleeping.

 

Darcy wrinkled her nose and sat up, trying very hard not to see all the little bones covered in slime and fur that were piled up just a foot away from the Monster Cat she’d decided last night was least likely to knead her belly with its massive claws. Or eat her. Turning away from the hairball meant turning directly into the large orange gaze of the marmalade-colored tabby at her side.

 

“Hey Garfield,” Darcy whispered.

 

Garfield, or whatever the Monster Cat’s name was, rumbled happily and head-butted Darcy, nuzzling at her hair. Several pairs of eyes, green and yellow and orange, blinked sleepily open from the darker corners of the abandoned barn she’d found the night before, and then shut again. The heavy footed black cat that’d been sleeping in the rafters pounced down to the floor boards in front of Darcy, making them rattle.

 

“Felix,” she said, as a warning.

 

Felix had paws and ears too big for his body and was probably whatever qualified as a teenager kitten when it came to massive cats. He’d spent most of the night before pouncing around her and nipping at her clothes, trying to get her to play with him while the other nest of beasts watched and hummed their commentary. Or maybe he wanted to dance battle, she really had no idea, these were fucking house-cats the size of energy efficient cars for christ’s sake.

 

“Don’t start with me, man,” Darcy said, finger in Felix’s face as she stood. Garfield’s tail curled softly around her legs, the end batting at the back of her thighs with thumps just on the gentle side of being able to knock her over.

 

Felix leaned back, tail-twitching and green eyes narrowing. She muttered ‘shit’ under her breath, bracing for impact when the barn door opened with a protesting squeal, streaming in sunshine and silhouetting a figure in light. The cats in the corners grumbled and tucked their heads deeper into paws and tails. Felix bounded over, thankfully distracted, and Garfield stood, jostling Darcy in her efforts to protect her new baby, or meal. Darcy still wasn’t sure exactly how the older cat saw her.

 

“Whoa there, little guy.” It was a woman. Darcy pushed her way out from behind Garfield to get a better view, the cat grumbling and then turning its nose up and walking back to a shadier, unoccupied corner of the barn to resettle.

 

“Holy shit. Hi,” Darcy said, running up to the door.

 

The woman reached into a bag hanging at her side and pulled out a massive dull looking fish, tossing it behind her and sending Felix in a total frenzy out of the barn and into the sunny street. She was only a little taller than Darcy, stocky and with graying curls that tried to escape from her short and tight ponytail. Darcy couldn’t place the clothing, it was almost too nondescript to really know where it came from. Her pants weren’t jeans, but they weren’t Thor’s britches either.

 

“Is there a door in here?” the woman asked, stretching up on her toes and squinting into the barn behind Darcy.

 

“Where am I?” Darcy asked, almost breathless with nerves and relief. Felix growled and batted at the dead fish, chasing it across the bricks away from them.

 

The woman’s eyebrows raised. “Whoa…uh…okay. How did you get here? Did someone bring you?”

 

Darcy took a deep breath and released it in a flurry of words. “I was in Bangkok and there was this door and someone was knocking so, you know, I opened it. And this hot guy was like ‘staying or going’ and I was like ‘ehhh going I guess?’ And then I was in, like, a garden, maybe. With books. And I picked up a book, cause, you know, reading is good for you. But the book was, like, melting and chocolate? It was a chocolate book, man! And the pages were sweet too, so I just kind of… licked my fingers…”

 

The woman face hung slack, her eye’s simply darting across Darcy, taking in the cat slobbered hair, and muddy jeans, and hoodie snagged and torn by Felix’s teasing.

 

“And then this old guy in a powdered-fucking-wig just popped up out of nowhere, or from behind a shelf, whatever, and he was like ‘Dost thou eat my book, bitch?’ and I was like ‘Maybe, accidentally?’ and then he wanted money. So I tried to give him some baht but he didn’t want baht but, like, I don’t have the currency here cause I don’t even know where I am-”

 

Darcy paused to suck in a breath.

 

“Trade,” the woman said.

 

“Huh?” said Darcy.

 

“The currency here is trade,” the woman said. “The more trivial the better. Happy meal toys are great.”

 

“Ohmigod you’re from Earth!!” Darcy said, feeling near tears with relief. “Please help me.”

 

“Umm…yeah. Okay. You seriously opened a Door?”

 

The woman took one last look inside the barn and then laid a gentle hand on Darcy’s sleeve guiding her back out to the uneven brick road that Darcy had followed out of the strange stonewalled book garden. The road was lined with painted brick walls that grew into untidy walls made of wooden slats, which grew into trees that sat so closely together their roots tangled into the earth and knocked bricks up out of the road.

 

“It was just sitting there, and I was…I was looking for…” Darcy explained to her about the GPS coordinates that had been left for her as a baby and the woman paused them in the road. They were just a few trees down from the arching branches that Darcy’d escaped out of the day before, chased by an irate man in a mossy colored wig who walked with his knees bowed up like a little satyr - which Darcy was trying not to read too much into.

 

The woman searched Darcy’s face again, her lips pinched tightly together, eyes crinkling at the edges. Then she reached out and shoved Darcy’s hoodie and t-shirt over her left shoulder.

 

“Hey!” Darcy shouted, about to pull away when she looked down and saw the knotted collection of fine, blue-black lines that lay delicately on her skin at the front of her shoulder, butting up against her collarbone. “Holy shit. What is that?”

 

“The map,” the woman said, sighing.

 

“The map of _what_?” Darcy asked.

 

“Where you are,” the woman said, rolling her eyes. “It appears when you walk through the Doors, so you can…you know, kind of find your way around while you’re here.”

 

Darcy threw her arms up. “Where is here?!”

 

The woman smiled slightly and shrugged. “I don’t know, honey. It’s just somewhere we can go.”

 

Darcy blinked, arms still lifted up, and waited a beat before something occurred to her.

 

“We?”

 

“You think if everybody could see those Doors you wouldn’t have heard about it by now?” the woman said, quirking up an eyebrow. “My grandfather showed me around when I was little and he realized I could see them. But no one else in my family can as far as I know.”

 

Darcy dropped her arms and looked around, the eerie place twisting around her in a new light. This _did_ have something to do with her family then.

 

“And you must have been here before because you can’t open a Door you haven’t already walked through. That’s why that ‘hot guy’ was knocking.”

 

“You thought someone brought me,” Darcy murmured, still trying to digest. Somewhere in her first two months of life, she had been not only in _Bangkok_ of all places, but in this Topsy-Turvy land. She knew she couldn’t expect to remember something like that, but at this moment she couldn’t even fathom the possibility. Was she _from_ here? Was one of her parents? Had they left her in Illinois and come back here?

 

“It happens sometimes.” The woman shook her head and rolled her eyes again. “Some asshat brings a friend along, which is okay, I guess, but then something happens and the Stranger gets left here without any way of getting back out. You just find them a door and send them back home. If you’re really nice you find them the door they came through.”

 

Darcy processed and then looked at the woman. “Are you really nice?”

 

She grinned and shrugged. “Not usually. _But_ I do happen to have a few extra little toys in my bag, so would you like me to sweet talk the old codger in the book garden into letting you use his Door again, or would you like to Travel with me?”

 

“I…”

 

She wanted a shower. She also wanted to rescue her things from the hostel she was staying at before they tossed them out or sold them. And she wanted to Travel.

 

“Would you come with me?” Darcy asked. “If I needed to do a couple things and then run back in?”

 

The woman frowned and looked over her shoulder at the road winding away and then back atDarcy.

 

“I haven’t been out there in decades,” she said, flatly. “I might wait for you. But no promises.”

 

“O-okay,” Darcy said. She reached out her hand. “I’ll take it. I’m Darcy, by the way.”

 

The woman’s face went stony. “Try not to get personal, honey. Just get your shit.”

 

 

**At the moment**

 

“It’s structurally sound,” Lang said, looking back and forth between Darcy and the weather beaten little house he’d just announced she’d be staying in. “I dance party tested it. With Lila and Cooper. It got surprisingly thrash-y.”

 

Iceland smelled like salt, and fish, and rotten eggs. Darcy caught a whiff of her backpack from a gust of wind rushing back to the shore and turned her face to press it into the smoke and spice scent still clinging to her clothes.

 

“You can always stay with the Bartons,” Lang said. “You might have to bunk with the kids-”

 

“This looks great,” Darcy lied.

 

The little house looked like a watercolor, paint worn away by the salty spray until it faded to gray with a blue-green tinge that might have been close to the original color or might just have been mold. But the windows had glass and the door sat shut and there was a narrow chimney on the right side that was puffing out small bursts of smoke. The ocean was less than a mile off in the distance, crashing loudly against the wall of the cliff, spitting into the wind that swirled and smacked against Darcy. Her hair was already turning into a stringy, tangled mess, curling and fuzzing in all odd directions.

 

She tried very hard not to think about the night, just over a month ago, she had traded a porcelain figurine the size of her palm of a cherubic boy peeing into a bucket for a stay in a brothel in Wonderland. The women had shown her to a bathtub big enough for four Darcys, full of bubbles and steamy water the scent of cakes baking. She’d been buffed and oiled and then massaged - demurely - until her muscles turned to jelly and she was led to a four poster bed with a mattress like clouds and clean, soft sheets that felt like flannel and silk and cashmere.

 

“Do you want the tour?” Lang asked, entirely too bright for Darcy’s taste.

 

“I think I’ll manage,” Darcy said. The house looked barely large enough to host two grown adults, let alone give them room to move around in.

 

“Yeah, okay,” Lang said, nodding.

 

Darcy hated that he sounded so disappointed. How boring was it here that Hot Dad Jokes thought giving her a tour of a little fishing shack was going to be worth his time?

 

“You’ve got hot water - bonus to Iceland, hot springs - and the stove for heat, but you’ll want to come up to the base for food and stuff. The most you’ll do in there is tea probably,” Lang said, stepping backwards in preparation to leave.

 

Darcy scowled at the house finally. “I’m gonna need a percolator. Or a french press,” she said, making no effort to sound friendly. No fucking way was she walking half a mile for coffee in the morning.

 

“Uhhh, yeah, okay. I’ll tell Wilson. He does supplies.”

 

“Right,” Darcy said to the house, shifting her backpack on her shoulder and stomping forward.

 

The door did not have a lock, but there was a heavy wooden board to bolt it shut. Darcy did so and then leaned back against it squeezing her eyes closed and taking slow, even breaths.

 

She was in fucking Iceland.

 

And not the the cool part where people sat around drinking in hot springs or hiking mountains together and staying at well insulated ‘cabins’ that looked the covers of Architectural Digest magazines. She is was in the _abandoned_ part of Iceland, leftover from when fishing industries were for dudes with boats, not companies with breeding waters. Not even Clint had looked that excited to be back here, and his _family_ was here. Natasha was taking off with the quinjet - still playing the political field with Wakanda - as soon as she was done ‘briefing’ with Rogers, or whatever. Darcy was tempted to stow away and get out of BümbleFück Iceland as fast as she had arrived.

 

She’d stepped off the quinjet after landing to see Captain America, who was apparently calling himself ‘Nomad now but mostly just Steve,’ give her a little apologetic grimace and nod. Like even the leader of this group knew he’d resigned her to dismal prospects. Lang had been practically vibrating with excitement on his left and Wilson had studied her up and down with the interest of a man who has had the same pool of three women to admire for the past several months.

 

Darcy sighed, opened one eye and then the next, and took in her cabin. There was a small square table sitting in the center of the room, with a battery powered lamp placed at the edge. There were two chairs, mismatched, against the wall by the door, and a small potbellied stove at the right edge of the room, fire glowing through the screen and a kettle sitting on the floor to the side. A narrow set of stairs on her left wound up to what was probably a loft bed, with a squat little dresser sitting below on the ground floor. She could see a sink peeking out from behind a walled partition at the far end of the cabin.

 

“Bare necessities,” Darcy sang under her breath.

 

She set her pack on the table and turned in a circle. Meager or not, there was a thoughtfulness in the details. The space was spotless and there were simple curtains in a soft shade of reddish-orange hanging on all the windows. Nervous and curious, Darcy rounded the table and checked behind the partition. The toilet had a chain pulley for flushing but was otherwise safe looking, and the tub was a claw-foot big enough for Darcy to curl up in. Above the faucets was a recently added shelf, the wood shiny and bright by comparison to the rest of the house, with a collection of toiletries that spoke of a consolation in their price-y name brands.

 

“Woman up, Darcy,” she said to herself. She’d roughed it worse with Jane in the early days. And certainly in Wonderland there had been dire and disgusting circumstances she’d trudged through for the sake of an adventure.

 

She took the stairs up to find the bed was squishy and soft, even if there was a concerning number of blankets piled on top, and the ceiling was dangerously low. There was also a strange collection of books stacked on a bench at the foot of the bed near where the chimney was bricked up by the wall. There were children’s books, Penguin classics, a few bestsellers, a selection of fantasy and sci-fi that touched on some of Darcy’s personal favorites, and a handful of wrinkled comics. It was as if everyone on the base had contributed and it made Darcy’s chest squeeze uncomfortably. On the very top of the stack was a paperback copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, hanging slightly open from use, pages dog-eared and fingerprint stains on the edges. Darcy folded her hands inside of her hoodie pockets and turned away from the books.

 

A small round window above her front door looked back at the scattered little town and up at the mountains surrounding it, a white line of water falling down through the craggy green landscape. Her cabin sat away from the group of houses and storefronts the team had converted into a base of operations. But there was no real sign of activity aside from two other skinny streams of smoke rising up out of buildings. The town still looked abandoned, buildings gray and thin. Natasha’s quinjet was gone. She was beginning to feel sympathy for Scott Lang, and Sam Wilson, and even Steve Rogers of all people. It had to be hard to relate to a world that needed saving when you’d removed yourself so far from it.

 

Darcy opened her mouth to speak, a pep-talk designed for one of Jane’s defeated moods ready on her tongue, and then remembered she was alone. Her mouth clacked shut and she rushed down the stairs. She hefted the wooden board out of its brackets and left the cabin, stomping back up the rocky path to the others.

 

The common space, which Scott had pointed out in the brief tour, was at the center of the village; an old General Store meets local bar and diner. Darcy could see the satellites and antennas clustered on the roof and scoffed at the collection. Rogers was gonna have to do better than that if he wanted to run a team of superheroes out of this joint. She and Jane had cobbled together better on no budget and scraps. Figures flickered in view through the glass bricks of the windows and Darcy opened the front door just as a gust of wind rushed up the road, slamming the door open and then shut again behind her.

 

The room looked up all at once. Rogers, Lang, and Wilson hunched over a round table packed with all different breeds of computers, a nest of wires, and an old school fax machine spitting out receipts of coded information into a pile that was about to spill over the edge. A young woman - near Darcy’s age by the looks of it but with the startled, open expression of a child - sat alone in a booth near the windows, hands tucked under herself. In the corner, by the kitchen door, a man stood, _lurked_ really, folded in on himself, his left arm held protectively to his stomach and a chin dark with stubble tucked down to his chest. The second Darcy met his gaze, he dropped his eyes to the floor, forehead knotting together.

 

_So that’s the Winter Soldier,_ Darcy thought.

 

“You didn’t have to come right away, Miss Lewis,” Rogers- Steve said.

 

“I kind of did though,” Darcy said, looking back at the table of hodgepodge technology streaming news in every direction.

 

“It’s rough,” Lang said, as if to keep her from saying it first.

 

Darcy bit her tongue, for once, and walked over to the table, watching the output on the screen.

 

“You’re pulling from the CIA?” she asked.

 

“Trying to track activity,” Rogers said.

 

“I got into their system, it’s just a matter of cracking ciphers,” Lang said.

 

“We got a few sorted,” Wilson said.

 

Darcy could recognize the sound of a man defending his honor from a mile away.

 

“But you’re getting the information after them,” Darcy said, and then spoke over them before they could point out what a good job they’d been doing before having to ask for help. “They’re using algorithms to find trends of activity around the world and you’re getting their results, yeah? Once it’s confirmed?”

 

“Yeah,” Lang said.

 

“So you need an algorithm. A better one,” Darcy said. “Probably a few variations while we figure out what yields best. And more satellites.”

 

“I’ve broken the data caps-” Lang started.

 

“Sure, and if you want to follow global government’s bread crumb trail and chase their steps to the conflicts then this is great. But the idea is to be there first, yeah? Preferably prepared. So you need to be receiving as much as possible and jail-breaking a data cap isn’t going to cut it.”

 

“What do you need?” Rogers asked, the corner of his mouth twitching.

 

Darcy made a list. The french press was on it.

 

* * *

_AN: I have heart eyes for all of you that joined this story. Hearts upon hearts upon eyes._

_Chapter title is lyrics from the song West by Menomena which is on this story's playlist._

_JanetSnakehole makes these chapters better by her spectacular support, and karate-chopping all the apostrophes out of my 'its.' She deserves much better. Have you read her fic burning flame, full of desire? It's my current fave._

_Send me some sugar!_


	3. Doll Parts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all magnificent and you remind me why it always feels so good to come back to fic!
> 
> This chapter is temporarily unbeta-ed because of excitability. (I FINALLY GOT TO WRITE SOME BUCKY) But I'll come back and tweak it up.

“Have you been to Chile?”

 

“Valparaiso, and then to a couple volcanos,” Darcy answered.

 

“ _Volcanos_?”

 

Darcy wiped her wet hands on her jeans and pulled her phone out of her back pocket. It was more or less useless now that she was off the grid, but she did still have all her pictures and music. She flipped through the months of photos- phones turned to static in Wonderland so it was clean of anything she didn’t want the others knowing about - until she found the one a Traveler had taken of her waving out of the back of a rickety, wooden, blue and yellow funicular, riding down the hill into the colorful seaside city. She passed it over to Lila who sat, legs folded, on the top of the bar’s kitchen counter as Darcy and Laura washed clothes in the industrial sinks.

 

Because Laura Barton was a no good, very bad, nasty ass slave driver.

 

Darcy hadn’t had chores assigned to her since she’d been in foster care. She had _elected_ to do most of the housework for Jane as her assistant but that was only because with Jane it got down to life or death situations with dirty laundry and unwashed dishes. Although maybe between the trauma-stricken, the man-children, the actual children, and the workaholic duo of Steve and Natasha, the everyday menial labor had gotten out of control for Laura.

 

The others were definitely _trying_ to help. Wilson did a lot of the cooking - although Darcy had over heard him bitching to Laura about super-soldiers needing to be in charge of their own super-portions. Clint and Lang took care of repairs and she hadn’t decided if the fact that the hot and cold faucets were switched in her bathroom was a prank or just an innocent idiot’s mistake. Dishes were on a rotating schedule and Wanda was the absolute best partner once Darcy convinced her that using her powers to do the washing was good practice. She was still trying to crack a smile out of the girl but she’d gotten an eye roll the other day and considered it progress. Steve and his shadow hauled supplies around, and scavenged for scrap in the other abandoned towns that littered the narrow dirt roads up and down the coast.

 

But Laura Barton was undeniably running the show. She kept track of their rations, of how well the clothes were holding up, of when one of the supers looked too stir crazy and needed a good excuse to go find her something very specific and essential from the outside world. Never mind homeschooling and entertaining two kids. All while keeping an eye on a wiley toddler.

 

Honestly, Laura Barton was probably the single most impressive person in their little collection.

 

So she tried not to mind too much that Laura had started sharing her load once Darcy’d got her code running more or less smoothly. She didn’t love hand washing laundry every other day while everyone else trained out in the open but Laura probably didn’t either and if she could be cool about it Darcy could certainly try.

 

“Who’s that?”

 

Lila held Darcy’s phone out with a picture of her and another Traveler jumping and high-fiving mid-air at the top of one of the little volcanos she’d visited.

 

“Just someone I met,” Darcy said. “I don’t remember their name.”

 

Laura leaned over to squint at the screen. Darcy’s companion in the picture was tall, lanky, redheaded and had called her ‘Love.’ She called him ‘Red.’ He’d been more interested in the unseen Traveler taking their picture, another good-looking man from South Africa, than Darcy. But Laura snorted and raised her eyebrows at Darcy before turning back to her washing.

 

Laura probably thought Darcy’d been bed-hopping more than country-hopping.

 

It was about equal, to be fair.

 

But trips to Wonderland came with a certain energy that buzzed through you for hours afterward. And Darcy was meticulously careful with her physical health, so where was the harm?

 

Not that she would make that argument to seven year old Lila. She still wanted Laura to _like_ her. The older woman was funny as hell and wonderfully grounded compared to the rest of the team.

 

“Lila can you go check what’s hanging to see if it’s dry?” Laura asked.

 

“I’ll do it,” Darcy said.

 

The downside to Laura was that she really wanted to gossip about Darcy’s travels and it was sometimes hard to talk in great detail of places like Dublin when she’d spent fifty percent of her time there somewhere else entirely. And how many times could you tell a friend that you didn’t get the names of the people you were with before they started worrying about you?

 

Darcy wiped her hands dry again and held one out for her phone. Lila was still flipping through pictures and turned the phone to face Darcy, an electric blue coast leaning into a cliff side, earth toned buildings stacking on top of each other.

 

“Where’s this?” Lila asked as Darcy took the phone.

 

“Mmm some island,” Darcy said, putting the phone in her back pocket. “Ibiza, I think.”

 

Or had she gone to Cyprus after Valparaiso?

 

“Tell me about it,” Lila said.

 

“Later,” Darcy and Laura said in unison.

 

Darcy tried not to laugh at the sympathetic smile Laura shot her. Lila was pretty awesome for a seven-year-old. But sometimes she threw a temper tantrum when Darcy wouldn’t let her paint her nails, _again_. Not that that didn’t make her better company than a quarter of the people living on base.

 

Darcy checked the feeds for any emerging crisis that needed their attention as she passed the table. She’d set up an alarm system through a set of speakers Lang had strapped up to a light pole at the center of the town, coded with a series of increasingly urgent sounds. It seemed to help organize what situations needed their attention, and what needed them to rush to the quinjet with coordinates so they could hit the ground running.

 

Steve had actually pulled her aside the week before and thanked her.

 

“I still don’t really understand how it all works,” he’d said with twin spots of pink on his cheeks. “But it does, and I’m grateful.”

 

Darcy, blank-faced with surprise for praise that she hadn’t had to twist out of someone’s mouth, had said, “No problem, man.”

 

She’d been rehearsing better answers in her head ever since.

 

She shouldered open the bar door and winced at the sudden glare of sunlight. The clouds had finally broken up and the wind was turned back to the ocean, giving them a chance to air dry linens outside instead of in musty and humid buildings. With a single ‘whoosh’ of warning Sam zoomed overhead as Darcy crossed the lane, her braid whipping up in the gust and smacking her in the cheek.

 

“Heads up,” Sam called, already safely away.

 

“Turd,” Darcy answered.

 

There was a quiet giggle, and Darcy looked up to see Wanda floating by, a red glow wrapped around her limbs. Clint and Lang had mentioned going out to practice their various tricks which meant that echoes of grunts and metallic clangs Darcy was following to the laundry line belonged to Rogers and Barnes. Laura had strung up cable between Lang and Wilson’s houses at the edge of their town where the ground slanted smoothly up a hill for a mile or so before reaching a right angle of the mountain shielding them. The quinjet was parked a ways back which meant Natasha was around somewhere.

 

She dropped a basket on the ground and unclipped a bed sheet, drawing it back and revealing the two soldiers sparring out in the field. Darcy tried not to stare. A little bit. She at least tried to make it seem like she wasn’t staring. But she didn’t usually get to have such an uninterrupted look at the Winter Soldier. He tended to stick to his shadowy corners, or just out of sight behind Steve, or sometimes he just didn’t show up to a meal at all. And she definitely never got a decent look at his arm.

 

When she had first arrived she’d managed to even forget there was a _reason_ to look. He kept it stuffed under heavy sleeves and usually positioned himself to hide it against his side. Then she’d been under the table rewiring a few set ups, and she’d bumped a table leg with her knee, toppling a precarious placed monitor. Before it could crush her knee cap two hands - one flesh and one metallic and skeletal with delicate wires twining around the fingers and running up the wrist - caught it, Barnes having appeared out of whatever hiding spot he’d been watching her from.

 

Darcy got an explanation out of Laura later. The arm Hydra had gifted him with was long gone, but every time Natasha came back with the quinjet Barnes got an updated version, and the current arm went back with Natasha, full of data for whoever was doing the engineering.

 

For the record, Darcy could spot Stark’s signature even at a glance, but she figured Barnes and Rogers weren’t aware of the connection so she bit her tongue.

 

Not that Barnes gave her much of a chance to spill the beans. Darcy had wondered at first if Barnes was on specific orders about how he could interact with the others on base. He kept himself scarce, he barely spoke, and he was always at the opposite end from Darcy or Laura or the kids of whatever space he was occupying. Then she saw the gestures.

 

The way Laura would find an excuse to get up from the table and pass by him, patting gently at his shoulder as she went. The little hand drawn pictures that were pinned to his front door in the early mornings. (She’d passed his house late at night after working kinks out on a code and the small light inside revealed walls full of Lila’s colorful little scribblings.) Sam Wilson’s relentless nagging and teasing, just on the right side of antagonistic if Barnes’s mild grunts were anything to go by. The way Clint would sneak up on the guy before speaking. Cooper’s paper airplanes with notes that the guy actually answered before flicking them back into the air, the return trips always making the smoothest landings. Lang’s constant music suggestions. Wanda’s pink cheeks anytime the guy walked within five feet of her. And don’t get her started on Rogers. She could write a thesis on how chill Rogers was around Barnes compared to pretty much anyone else aside from Wilson and Natasha.

 

As far as Darcy could, tell the only person on base who was scared of the Winter Soldier was the Winter Soldier.

 

It made her twitch with the urge to muss his hair and squeeze the crap out of him.

 

Steve and Barnes paused, mid-strike and stepped back. She could see their heavy breathing from here and caught herself wetting her lips. Barnes long hair flicked in the wind and he caught sight of her just in time for her to go back to gathering a handful of pillowcases into her arms. There was a warning swish of a bed sheet out of the corner of her eye and then Natasha appeared out from behind it, two massive cloth bags slung over her shoulders.

 

“Hey,” Darcy said. She hadn’t figured out a way to greet the Black Widow without sounding a little terrified. But neither had Lang, so...

 

“I come bearing gifts,” Natasha said lightly, shrugging her shoulders.

 

Darcy stepped forward and looked inside the brim of one bag, her face lighting up.

 

“Oh my god.” Inside were piles of high-quality, sweater-quantity, wool yarn. And not the thick and somewhat scratchy Icelandic wool she’d been working with all month. This was some top-notch designer shit. Hand paints and smooshy cashmere blends and tweedy fingering weight.

 

“Where did you get all this?” Darcy asked, totally dazzled. Did the Black Widow _like_ her? Did she _love_ her? This was the mother-load.

 

“Pepper Potts heard you were with us,” Natasha said.

 

Ah. That made more sense. Darcy had once held an in-depth knitwear conversation with Pepper Potts - they had similar taste but vastly different budgets - and then made a little baby sweater for Pepper’s niece. Darcy looked up to Natasha’s smile. The other woman looked faintly amused by her joy.

 

“I didn’t realize how excited you’d be,” Natasha said. “I would have brought you some sooner. There are patterns in there as well. Pepper said you wouldn’t mind.”

 

“Well I’m set for the year now,” Darcy said, still beaming. “You can pick out your sweater first.”

 

“You’d make me one?”

 

OH BOOM. Darcy had officially caught the Black Widow off-guard if the woman’s open expression of surprise was to be trusted.

 

“Yeah girl,” Darcy said, feeling suddenly easy-going and magnanimous. “You and Wanda and the super soldiers are the only ones who aren’t going to outright demand one, if you think about who we live with.”

 

“Then I want the blue cashmere,” Natasha said, without even having to glance into the bags. “Have you been to the hot spring yet?”

 

“Laura showed me where it was but I haven’t been in yet,” Darcy said.

 

“Then let’s drop this off at the bar and go.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Darcy,” Natasha said with a soft tilt of her head, cat’s gaze in full swing again. “You’ve been here for over a month and you haven’t been in a hot spring? You’ve earned it. Let’s go.”

 

Darcy looked around, searching for someone who might help make sense of the situation. In the distance, Steve and Barnes were standing and watching them with same level of interest Darcy had been giving them earlier.

 

“I don’t have a suit,” she said.

 

Natasha pursed her lips to hide a smile. “Then I won’t peek.”

 

Somehow Darcy didn't think that would help hide her Wonderland tattoos.

 

_

  
It hadn't.

 

Darcy'd only just started peeling off her shirt when Natasha said, "That's quite the ink you've got there."

 

"It's an ongoing project," Darcy said, mentally rehearsed words spilling out. "A collage of places I've been."

 

She stripped efficiently and Natasha pretended not to notice the way her 'project' appeared in some very unusual and private places.  Darcy sank quickly down into the hot spring, hoping that the water was enough to obscure the strange names and knot-like patterns of the streets. She was fully submerged in the steaming water, a knot in her lower back that she hadn’t realized was there easing itself away, when she realized the little spider had been spinning its web around her.

 

“How’s the transition going for you?” Natasha asked, skimming a slender hand in patterns over the water. “With the rest of the team?”

 

Darcy shrugged. “Fine, I guess. I’m kind of doing my own thing or I’m helping Laura. I’m probably more qualified for this work than anything I did with Jane.”

 

“We pulled you away from a bit of a vacation.”

 

Darcy laughed. “Yeah. You really, really did. But that’s okay. It wasn’t a realistic approach to life I guess, just wandering around.”

 

“Lila’s been telling me about all the places you’ve been,” Natasha said.

 

Darcy had been looking at the scenery around them; the waterfall they had passed on their way, roaring down the drop off in the mountain. But there was a little twist her in chest and Darcy looked back to find Natasha studying her, stalking her prey. Maybe Darcy shouldn’t have been so open with her stories but she’d only ever mentioned the places on earth.

 

“Mmhm,” Darcy said.

 

“That’s a lot travel,” Natasha said.

 

A lot of travel for someone with a small monthly stipend. It was left unsaid, but she could see the conclusion on the other woman’s face.

 

“I was kind of mooching off the people I met,” Darcy said. “But I grew up in Illinois and I didn’t leave the town till college. I’ve got a bug for it now.”

 

“And all these people who paid for your travel? You never bothered to catch their names?” The amusement in Natasha’s voice had a sharp edge.

 

“If you’re worried about what I told them, I never said a thing about the Av-” Darcy started, drawing up her shoulders.

 

“No one here questions your loyalty to the team,” Natasha soothed.

 

“Really? Cause this feels like an interrogation.”

 

Natasha shrugged. “I’m a curious person and you’re obviously keeping a secret.”

 

Darcy blinked and then turned her face away. Her jaw was clenched and she worked it loose, swallowing hard.

 

“Okay,” she said. “I am.”

 

Natasha smirked, and then relaxed back into the water. “I just like to make these things clear,” she said.

 

“And that’s it then?”

 

“No,” Natasha said, face turned up to the sky, breasts teasing their way out of the water. “Do you remember your dreams?”

 

“ _What_?”

 

“Wanda said you think of things. Impossible or strange things that can’t be real. She thinks you dream of them.”

 

Darcy felt sick and the steam curling around her face was suddenly making it hard to breathe. She stood up out of the water abruptly, grabbing at the fuzzy flannel robe folded carefully to the side. Why hadn’t she thought of these things? Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? Why had she tried to warm Wanda up to a friendship?

 

Why had she left Wonderland behind and come _here_?

 

“Oh yeah? I guess I must. What did the Winter Soldier say about me?” Darcy snarled, trying to stuff her wet legs into jeans. “Or Sam? Or Steve?”

 

Hot springs were okay, although Darcy wasn’t loving her first experience, but they were less appealing when you were wet and angry and turning cold with every gust of fall weather.

 

“Hang on. I’ll walk back with you,” Natasha said instead of an answer.

 

Darcy did not hang on.

 

She didn’t have any false confidence that she could make it back to the base without Natasha catching up to her. But she figured she could get far enough without any further conversation. She probably would have managed it if it weren’t for the flash of gold in the waterfall that caught her eye.

 

It wasn’t a very big waterfall. About as wide as a car, with a small stream trailing off, it hit the rocks below. There was just a foot or so of space between it and the cliff wall that curved in behind it. Darcy held her breath, her eyes filling up, as she shifted her steps to the side, catching a glimpse behind the crash of water.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Darcy breathed.

 

It was a Door. A perfect, beautiful, golden door with a small rose handle jutting out.

 

She had a Door.

 

She felt like someone just pulled a sack of weights off her body, a sense of being trapped that she’d ignored for the better part of a month suddenly vanishing again.

 

She could leave.

 

Darcy took a step forward, her heart thrashing with nerves and relief in her chest.

 

“They didn’t realize they were feeding me information about you,” Natasha said from behind her.

 

Darcy froze, her shoulders stiffening again.

 

“That’s why they were the ones I asked,” the woman went on. “Clint or Steve would have realized I was digging. So don’t be angry with them. And I meant what I said about trusting you with the safety of the team. But you’re keeping something and I can’t figure it out which is…”

 

“Concerning?” Darcy said, still staring at the Door. The one Natasha couldn’t see.

 

“Impressive,” Natasha said, and Darcy wondered if she imagined the pleased note to the woman’s voice. “I’d like for you to tell me…someday. I’ll stop for now.”

 

Darcy swiveled in step. Natasha was dressed, her damp hair pulled up off her shoulders and the flannel robe wrapped around her body. She had Darcy’s shirt and underwear stacked and held out like a peace offering. Darcy grabbed them and folded them to her chest.

 

“Fine,” Darcy said. Natasha’s mouth twitched with a smile so Darcy added, “Now I’d like to be left alone.”

 

Natasha looked over Darcy, half dressed and hair dripping, and then at the empty landscape around them. Darcy could see the hesitation on her face, the urge to ask for an explanation or to encourage Darcy into taking the move she wanted from her. Trying to manipulate her like a chess piece. There was a faint struggle over her face and then it eased, and Natasha nodded.

 

“Steve will worry if you’re gone too long,” Natasha said. “He still thinks you’re a little helpless.”

 

“I’ll come back when I’m ready,” Darcy said firmly.

 

Natasha blinked. “Okay. I’ll let them know.”

 

Darcy waited until Natasha was just a little flicker of red in the field. She dressed, keeping the robe on for warmth, and then waited by the waterfall to make sure Laura or Clint or someone didn’t come to check on her. She tried guessing at the time by keeping track of her shadow, but in the end her impatience got the best of her.

 

The waterfall seemed louder, the rattle and splash of it against the ground harder and more dangerous, as she approached. She leaned against the slick rocks as she edged closer, feeling the mist gather in her hair and on her clothes, her boots sucking up water as she stepped under the falls. She tiptoed, afraid of slick rocks, but it was gravelly and easy to move through. She rested her face against the Door for a moment, pressed her palm over the rose even though she couldn’t open it herself, and then began to knock, urgently. She knocked until her knuckles burned, and then turned her fist to pound with the fleshy side.

 

“Open! Open!” she yelled into the solid Door.

 

Then she stumbled through, kicking up water onto the person on the other side.

 

“Oh, Jesus, you again,” said the short woman with the curly gray hair.

 

Darcy pushed forward, the woman flinching away, and then took the Door out of her grasp and slammed it shut. She fell back against it, gasping for breath, and resisted the urge to burst into tears.

 

“Mama, mama, mama,” an eerie chorus of voices called out around them.

 

“You woke them up,” the woman said.

 

Darcy looked around and a dozen porcelain faces with glassy blue eyes - some faded nearly to white - gazed back at her.

 

“Oh, ew,” Darcy said, distracted from her relief.

 

“Welcome to the Junkyard,” the woman said, swinging an arm around.

 

Darcy stared at the woman before launching herself forward and wrapping her up into a hug. Curly Gray, as Darcy had mentally called her since their first meeting months ago even though the woman patently refused to be named at all, stiffened in Darcy’s arms.

 

“Thank you,” Darcy said and then let go.

 

“Mama, mama, mama,” sang the dolls.

 

“What was out there?” Curly Gray asked, glancing at the Door.

 

“Iceland,” Darcy said. “But not the cool part.”

 

It occurred to her that for the sake of the team on the other side of the Door it would be better if Travelers never walked through. Luckily, Curly Gray had already asserted that she wasn’t interested in going back to Earth, and Darcy knew enough about Wonderland’s Junkyard to know that most Travelers avoided it. Still, Darcy took a long look around at the strange assemblage of refuse that surged up around her and then hurried forward to roll a large wooden table top carved with dragons and stained flat black over the Door she’d come through.

 

“Fuckin’ trustworthy as shit,” Darcy muttered to herself as Curly Gray watched her with naked confusion.

 

“So…” Curly Gray said as Darcy stepped back and rolled out her shoulders. “What’s new with you?”

 

“None of your business,” Darcy answered, making Curly Gray smile. “How the hell do we get out of this place?”

 

Curly Gray led them through a well worn path between a wall of glass jars full of marbles - or little metal coins, or pebbles, or fingernail clippings, or well preserved flower petals - and a low shelf of scraps of clothing and discarded hats that occasionally spilled out into the path and had to be trudged through. Beyond their walk Darcy could see pyramids of plates piled into high, narrow towers, and a pool of handwritten notes and dried flowers and lipstick stained handkerchiefs. Near the gate of the junk yard there was a spectacularly balanced arrangement of glass shards that pieced together into a mosaic of what might have been a portrait, or maybe a desert landscape, or maybe an abstract rendition of the emotion Longing.

 

“Who does all this?” Darcy asked, as they walked beneath the gate, a twisting and ornate structure that seemed to battle itself upwards into the sky, a beautiful collection of rust patterned and shaped like a Faberge egg at the peak.

 

Curly Gray shrugged but said, “I can hear them, when I’m here at night. Are you hungry?”

 

She was. “I didn’t bring anything to trade,” Darcy said, her arms lifting as if to show how little she had with her.

 

“Oh, big surprise,” griped Curly Gray, but Darcy was pretty sure she was being teased. “Come on.”

 

Darcy had passed the Junkyard in her travels before, but never gone in. No one had ever mentioned there being a Door inside, which was a secret Darcy now planned on guarding, and it looked like the kind of place where you might get buried alive. But she did know the areas outside of the Junkyard reasonably well, and had most of them tattooed across her left hip.

 

The Crest of the Female Orgasm was a personal favorite. She could hear the delighted cries from where Curly Gray led them down a dirt path to a little collection of brocade patterned tents. The pop-up village was full of Travelers who tended towards permanent residency and a group of what Darcy suspected were more original locals if the unusual protuberance of small feathered wings from their backs was anything to go by. At the heart of the three rings of tents sat dozens of richly colored mats and pillows and a huge fire with a number of cooks working at small stations.

 

Curly Gray handed over a couple toy soldiers retrieved out of her bag and a tall man with downy brown wings and little gray speckles, led them to a plum colored mat and brought over two steaming bowls of stew. Darcy and the woman dug into the food in silence, content to watch the people around them. Darcy saw a Traveler she’d hopped through Australia with on the other side of the fire, but was happy not to renew the acquaintance. After a month with the same handful of people, anonymity felt wonderful again.

 

Darcy ate a second helping of the stew as Curly Gray got up and proceed to work some kind of trade with a group of villagers. By the time the woman came back to their mat, Darcy had flopped backwards, one hand resting on her full stomach.

 

“You’re going to have to go back,” the woman said. “You’ve got nothing useful on you.”

 

“I know,” Darcy said, almost near napping and not wanting the floating feeling to eek away with conversation.

 

“Is it dangerous?” Curly Gray asked and then, more haltingly, “Do you- do you need…help?”

 

“No.” Darcy opened her eyes and then winced, the sun was so warm and red above them. “No it’s safe. I was just angry. And I’ve been away from here so long.”

 

“Alright then,” Curly Gray said.

 

Darcy was touched by the way this seemed to ease the woman.

 

“I can’t stay here long,” the woman added. “Got work to do. But they won’t kick you out.”

 

“Tha’s fine,” Darcy sighed, wanting to sleep. “I can find my way back.”

 

“Good.”

 

A few moments, or minutes, or maybe longer, Darcy felt a soft touch against the back of her hand and heard a murmured, “Goodbye, honey.” But she might have already been asleep.

  


_

  
  


It was after dark when Darcy snuck back into Iceland. She had slipped into the Junkyard at night, and tread carefully through the path she’d used earlier, grateful for every gasp of moonlight that cast shadows across the piles of trash and treasure. In the dark she heard the sound, the _clink clink tap_ of someone working away, rearranging or inventing anew. She’d held her breath as she reached the doll choir, asleep again, and found she had propped the black dragons in front of the door with enough space for her to squirm through.

 

Her boots had dried by the fire in the tent town, so she carried them in her hand, her pants rolled up her legs, and hissed at the frigid cold of the water beneath the falls. She wasn’t sure what time it was, but either Curly Gray had traded another toy for Darcy’s after nap meal, or the tent town people were just nice because they had fed her again. She wondered if Steve really did get worried, or if Natasha had just said that to keep a leash on her.

 

Either way, there was no one looking for her outside the waterfall. In fact, the closer she got to base, the more she had to ignore a small twinge of offense. No one seemed to be looking for her at all, and the houses had the small lamp glows of people who were settling down for the night.

 

There was squeak of hinges and the bar door opened. Darcy froze in the street and the Winter Soldier paused in the doorway, face shadowed from the light inside.

 

“You okay?”

 

Had she heard him speak before? Maybe not, because she was surprised by the tone. She’d expected him to sound gruff, or raspy. Maybe even a sort of growl. But he was surprisingly soft spoken. And sort of…normal sounding. She felt dumb for expecting otherwise.

 

“Yeah,” she said. “Restless, I guess.”

 

He nodded in the doorway and then leaned to the side, a little sliver of light curling over his cheekbone and showing his eyes turned to the ground. She realized, after a too long beat, that he was holding the door open for her, giving her room to come inside. She rushed forward as he shifted, afraid that he might retract the gesture.

 

“Thanks,” she said as she passed.

 

Inside, atop the bar, the bags of yarn (with patterns included) were lined up, little post-its stuck on the outside with names scrawled across. There was a bottle of Malört - which, _ew_ , who had voluntarily been drinking that stuff, it was the worst - and a bottle of Monkey Shoulder whiskey. Darcy poured herself a glass of the latter and then looked at Barnes who was still hovering in the doorway.

 

“Were you drinking that?” she asked, nodding to the bitter Swedish schnapps. It was technically her fault they had any. She’d mentioned it as one of the most vile flavored beverages she’d ever had the displeasure of drinking and then the three stooges - Clint, Wilson, and Lang - had begged Natasha to fetch some. Darcy had taken a picture of their faces as they took their first shot.

 

“M’not stupid,” Barnes said and then moved closer, letting the door swing shut behind him. “S’Lang n’ Wilson.”

 

Darcy snorted and sipped at her whiskey. “Why’re you still out?”

 

Barnes hesitated, looking around the room as if he were trying to find the best spot to duck away to and then he walked purposefully up to the bar and sat down across from Darcy.

 

“Steve and Tash,” he said, as way of explanation.

 

Darcy raised an eyebrow and he sighed - and that too surprised her, the sort of lazy exasperation after so much reserve.

 

“They’re…you know, together,” he said. “Think I don’t know, which…rude. So I go off for a bit when she gets back. They can pretend they’re sneakin’.”

 

Darcy tried to tamp down the smile that was growing on her face and failed without much remorse.

 

“That’s adorable,” Darcy said and Barnes grimaced. “No, really,” she said. “You’re a good wingman. Why do they think you’d care?”

 

“I trained Tash,” Barnes said, like he’d expected her to already know this. “Back in the day.”

 

“Well yeah,” Darcy said, warm and a little bit stupid from the whiskey. “But not like, in bed, right?”

 

Barnes stiffened and blushed slightly. Darcy’s mouth formed a small ‘o’ of surprise and then she giggled, trying to turn away.

 

“S’not funny,” he said flatly.

 

“No, no, it’s just,” she giggled again and then straightened her expression, nodding. “I get it now. Bros before hoes or whatever.”

 

Barnes looked flummoxed, eyes wide, both hands braced on the bar in front of him.

 

“Shit no, not that - shit. Do _not_ tell Natasha I said that,” Darcy said, pointing a finger in his face. “She will kill me. I want to kill me. It’s just a phrase. A stupid one- stupid people say it. I - I am stupid.”

 

Seemingly out of nowhere, Barnes was grinning.

 

And then Darcy really _felt_ stupid. Like all her neurons had just fritzed and were out of commission. She opened her mouth to say something probably awful, like how utterly hot he was when he smiled. Which, to be fair, he had been before but now it was just…She was ready to climb over the bar and right into his lap and she couldn’t even blame it on the whiskey. Wonderland was a pretty free place and it had definitely made sex seem accessible and casual to her in a way she’d never experienced before. Now she needed to remind herself that these were people she couldn’t leave at the next Door so she better not make it awkward.

 

“I dunno, Doll,” he said, and her mouth went dry so she took another sip of whiskey and dug her toes into the floor. “You might need to bribe me.”

 

He reached down the length of the bar, twisting in his seat to use his right arm and making the flannel button down stretch across his shoulders, and picked up one of the bags of yarn. It was a deep shade of green, near to black, and the pattern was for a simple looking men’s cardigan with pockets. It had Clint’s name scribbled on the front.

 

“It’s yours,” she said.

 

He flicked Clint’s note off, smiling to himself in a way that was somewhere between sweet, and very, very naughty.

 

It was definitely time for Darcy to get to bed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can google Malört face, but it really doesn't do justice to the awfulness.
> 
> Again, you all are amazeballs from kudos to comment and I absolutely love hearing from you!! I crave it like Darcy craves Wonderland!
> 
> 4/12 edit - I goofed and forgot a fairly significant thing (Darcy's tattoos) so I've gone in and loosely covered my ass. In a perfect draft Natasha's interrogation probably wouldn't take place in a hot spring while they're both naked. But hey, that's the fun of fic!
> 
> <3


	4. Take Me There

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS ARE GREAT AND IF I COULD TAKE YOU ALL TO WONDERLAND I WOULD. Thank you so so so much for all the love you gave this story. I can't believe people are reading it!! Since I can't take you to Wonderland, I brought you a big chapter full of it.
> 
> On that note, I don't even know how to tag for the content in this chapter. There's a bunch of sex and none of our characters are getting any. As JanetSnakehole (who did a superhero job beta-ing this chapter and takes such good care of me and is a BAMF) put it, there's a lady-pleasure-fest ahead. But this story is tagged explicit and I will take advantage of that in the weirdest ways.
> 
> ENJOY!

Darcy was sipping at her coffee, knitting steadily at the body of a sweater, and mentally narrating to herself how quaint her life had become in the last few weeks. It was morning and she was by the fire, waiting until it was light enough to see the path up to the bar and go find breakfast. Natasha was on base again but Darcy kept to herself for the most part since they’d had their hot spring chat. Solitude meant she’d done a lot of coding, and a lot of knitting - trading one type of pattern for another until she thought her brain might degrade into xhtml and knit and purl. She stretched her sanity with walks up to the falls in the accumulating snow, checking on her Door but never walking through. It helped to know it was there, and that was enough for now.

 

It wasn’t  _ total  _ solitude. Bucky came by some evenings, with a deck of cards and a little bit of whiskey. He didn’t make a lot of conversation, but he played gin rummy with a dedication to the original set of rules that bordered on religious. Darcy wasn’t sure if he was coming to check on her, since he always entered her house slowly and with a watchful expression, or if he was just making himself scarce for Steve and Natasha. Either way, she liked his company. He was quiet and attentive in a way that twisted her insides. When she spoke, his eyes stayed steadily fixed on her face and he could recall snippets of their previous conversations verbatim. 

 

She was developing a crush. There were days where she was so scared of this fact that she debated locking her door to him, or running away to Wonderland, or just saying something obscene and rude in the hopes it might scare him off. 

 

She debated these, but didn’t follow through with them. She didn’t even skip a breakfast, which hadn’t been a meal she’d cared much about in the past, because he didn’t skip breakfasts. He barely managed looking awake while eating, but he showed up.

 

Darcy finished her round and tucked the project away into a little canvas bag she had decorated with ‘I’VE GOT BIG BALLS’ in block letters. She was hopping in place, trying to jam her boot on without having to unlace, when the alarms went off. Not the mild ‘beep beep’ alarms that meant someone needed to come check the monitors in the bar to see what was going on but the ‘WAHOOO WAHOOO’ alarms that meant Assemble And Fast. Loud enough to ensure everyone on base would hear them regardless of the hour.

 

Darcy was pretty sure she managed to get her door shut in her rush to leave. Aside from the single drill they’d run weeks ago to check that it did actually wake Sam up from a dead sleep, she’d never heard this alarm go off. There wasn’t anything she could do aside from make sure that none of her programs were malfunctioning but something BAD bad was happening somewhere and-

 

Darcy slipped, jogging forward at a tilt for a few steps, nearly about to topple, before catching steady ground again.

 

-And for a moment she forgot Jane was off-world.

 

But …what if?  _ Someone _ was in trouble.

 

She stomped hard against the ground the rest of the way to the bar, daring her feet to slip again. Sam reached the door at the same time as her and held it open. Which was surprisingly polite, Darcy noted at the back of her thoughts, considering he was going to be needed and she was going to be pretending to eat breakfast while actually just worrying about the team.

 

“At least a dozen unfriendlies,” Natasha said, typing fast, bent over a monitor.

 

“They’ve got some AIM gear, new but it looks like it’s piggybacking off what we dealt with in Munich,” Lang said. He hopped between another two sets of screens.

 

“The quinjet-” Sam said, heading for the locker where he kept his wings.

 

“Mechanical failures, we’re working with mach-2, max. Could take as much as two hours to get there,” Clint said.

 

“What can you do?” Steve asked Lang as he paced a ring around the tables.

 

“For the quinjet? Shit man, nothing. We’ve got nothing to work with here.”

 

“How much time do they have?” Wanda asked. She was perched on a bar stool, face turned away from the screens, hands tucked between her knees with her palms pressed together like a prayer.

 

No one answered her.

 

Darcy searched the room and finally found Bucky, leaning against the glass brick windows, eyes fixed on Steve as he paced. He looked defeated, waiting for the facts to sink in around the room. Darcy looked back at the screen, slipping in between Lang and Natasha, her throat tightening as she studied the aerial views they were streaming.

 

“That’s a school,” Darcy said, pointing a long, old, brick building trimmed in stone like something out of a gothic novel. “That’s in Bursa…I- I’ve been there.”

 

It was a small, and historic area of Turkey full of international diplomats and beautiful old buildings nestled closely together. And the English-speaking school on the screen where those international diplomats sent their children.

 

Natasha’s eyes flicked to her face and then back to the monitors.

 

“We’ve got dozens of school kids in the hands of unaligned mercenaries, we’re two hours out and they’ve made demands for within the next hour, what can we do?” Steve growled. Darcy thought it might have been meant for himself but she could see the way it rippled through the others, faces paling and tightening, willing different circumstances

 

“We should call-” Natasha said, quietly, as if she knew the response.

 

Steve cut her off, sharp and equally quiet. “What can  _ we do _ ?”

 

Darcy felt dizzy. Bucky moved out of the corner of her eye, for her or for Steve, she wasn’t sure.

 

Then she whispered, “I know how to get there.”

 

Natasha was the only one who really looked at her.

 

“What if we-”

 

“I know how to get there,” Darcy said, louder, interrupting Lang.

 

The others turned to stare at her and she couldn’t feel the floor beneath her. But there were little kids in that school and Bursa had been so sweet, and charming, and full of little old ladies who wore scarves around their hair. And she didn’t want anything like this to happen there and she could  _ do something. _

 

“How long?” Natasha asked.

 

“Forty-five minutes,” Darcy said. Her heart was pounding, painfully, and her cheeks were on fire and she had this feeling in her gut like she’d just broken something very precious. “A half hour if you don’t ask questions and you just follow me and we go… _ now _ .”

 

She turned and rushed out the door and she could hear them scrambling for gear behind her, but she was bound to be the slowest of the lot of them and they could fucking catch up. 

 

_ What if it doesn’t work?  _ A wicked part of her thought.  _ What if the Door won’t open? _

 

_ Then the situation is as fucked as it was before,  _ she answered.

 

The team did catch up, and then Darcy had to try to run, and she kept slipping, with Clint and Bucky grabbing her elbows and setting her back on her feet. And it was all a little embarrassing. Especially as the closer they got to the falls that initial burst of action seemed to ebb away and she could feel them staring at her, doubting their decision to follow her.

 

“I’m not sure I understand,” Steve said, sounding annoyed and like he was trying not show it, clearing his throat and keeping a tight leash on his tone.

 

“And you won’t,” Darcy said. “So don’t ask.”

 

He frowned and pulled up on the front zipper of his tac-suit. Darcy felt a burst of love for Laura, who had tightened the seams weeks ago as a joke, forcing the zipper to slide down his chest, nearly to his navel, when he exerted himself. He’d yet to figure out what happened and had taken to safety pinning it shut.

 

“Is this a space portal thing?” Clint asked.

 

They’d reached the falls, which were starting to ice over, a long jagged wall covering the Door with a stubborn rinse of water still sliding down. But the Door  _ was _ there.

 

“Fuck if I know,” Darcy muttered, mostly to herself. 

 

She tiptoed out over the ice, grasping at the wall, and then the warm golden frame of the door. Bucky held her elbow and she could feel his gaze fixed on her face, but she was afraid to look back and see his expression.

 

“Is anyone else  _ concerned _ right now?” Lang whispered.

 

“Yes,” Sam said.

 

“They weren’t dreams.”

 

Darcy looked over her shoulder, past Bucky, to see Wanda push her way between Steve and Natasha. She stood, eyes wide and lips parted, staring at the rock wall.

 

“You can see it,” Darcy said.

 

Wanda shook her head. “No. But you can,” she said.

 

“So concerned,” Lang said, even quieter.

 

Darcy turned the handle and swung the Door open. It bumped gently against the table she had propped up, just as she’d left it. The team gasped, and Bucky dropped her elbow, so she assumed that the spell, or the disguise or whatever it was, was broken.

 

“Be careful not to knock anything over once you get inside,” Darcy said, staring down at her feet as she gestured in for them to walk ahead of her.

 

Bucky took a step back and Wanda curved around his side, her lips pressing together to fight a smile. Darcy wondered what the girl had already seen from her own thoughts.

 

“This is amazing.” 

 

Wanda’s voice was breathy but warm and it broke the freeze over the other's muscles. Steve clapped one hand onto Bucky’s cybernetic shoulder and they moved in through the door together. Darcy smirked at her shoes at the muttered proclamation of ‘Jesus Christ’ from Steve. Sam and Clint nearly knocked into one another as they followed.

 

Lang bopped Darcy on the nose as he passed. “Lucy,” he slurred. “You got some ‘splaining to do.”

 

Darcy looked up to find Natasha staring at her. She jerked her head to the door.

 

“I’ve got to shut it behind us,” she said.

 

Natasha smiled and slipped in.

 

“It’s a good secret,” she said, as Darcy shut the door behind her, throwing them in shadow.

 

“You have no idea,” Darcy answered.

 

When they came out from behind the table-top the dolls were singing again. They were packed together in the small circle of open space in front of the door, their faces shifting from disgust and horror to a stunned amazement.

 

“Mama, mama, mama.”

 

“I do not fucking like that,” Sam said, shaking his head, unblinking, at a cluster of dolls.

 

“Don’t touch anything,” Darcy snapped at Clint who’d been reaching out with an arrow notched in his bow to poke at a doll.

 

The group of superheroes turned and stared expectantly at her and Darcy felt her mouth go dry before she realized they were waiting on her. On orders from her. And then she kind of wanted to smile.

 

She fought down the urge…nearly.

 

“Don’t touch anything, don’t grab anything,” Darcy said, pushing through the cluster of bodies to the head of the path. “I don’t know why this stuff is here or who put it there but it’s staying. As is. Apply that as a general rule until I get us to Bursa.”

 

“What the hell is this place?” Lang asked, shying away from a toppled hatstand burdened with little plastic red Tumblin’ Monkeys. Darcy grabbed a handful and stuffed them in her coat pockets. Currency might be necessary.

 

“This is the Junkyard but generally…well it doesn’t have a name. I guess I call…” she trailed off as she had to pull her legs up out of the sucking swirl of pant-legs and stockings that flooded the path. “It doesn’t matter. If you can’t see the Doors you can’t get here without someone who can. And… well there are other things but- just- just follow me.”

 

“Thought you said not to touch anything,” Bucky said, watching her bend down to fish an Eiffel Tower keychain out of an open drawer full of rubber-bands and thumb tacks and ball point pens that looked like they’d already burst.

 

“This is different,” Darcy said, and then added in a whisper to Bucky. “I’m mostly nervous about them knocking something over and us all getting buried alive.”

 

“Do you think this is where my lost socks go?” Clint asked.

 

Bucky snorted and shook his head, squinting across the landscape of refuse. “Fair ‘nough.”

 

“You can get us to Bursa from here?” Steve asked, trying to sound like he believed it. 

 

“I can get you across the street from that school in…under twenty minutes if you stay close and… don’t get distracted and don’t talk to anyone-”

 

“There are people in here?” Bucky asked, too quiet.

 

“Um yeah,” Darcy said. “People and, like, etcetera? People like me,” she said, as her voice started creeping into a nervous squeak, “And, you know, other kinds of people.”

 

“Are we safe?” Natasha asked. She sounded like she wanted to know approximately how armed she should be.

 

“ _ Yes, _ ” Darcy rushed to say. “Yes. Absolutely. Very safe. I mean not everybody  _ loves _ Strangers but you’re with me, so we’re totally good. We just aren’t going to dawdle. Umm…”

 

They’d reached the Junkyard gates.

 

“Holy shit, is that a quantum cryptogram?” Lang asked, pointing at one of the curlicues of metal above them. “Is this a time machine?!”

 

“Lang! Focus!” Darcy snapped. He spun in place and Darcy both her hands up to her cheeks, trying to cool the heat there. “Okay, look. It’s about to get really weird-”

 

“About to?” muttered Sam.

 

“-And I just need you guys to…to shut up and follow me and try not to pay attention to what’s going on around you. Wanda, girl, get your shields up super tight.”

 

“It’s a little late,” Wanda said with bright pink flushes across her cheeks. “You’ve been projecting.”

 

“Right,” Darcy winced. “Sorry.” She’d been spending most of the walk worrying about how she was going to explain the route they needed to take. Because that was going to be…

 

“Lewis, lead the way,” Steve said, taking the reins on the conversation. “Bucky, when we get into the square I want you covering Lewis.”

 

“Got it,” Bucky said, taking a step to Darcy, his rifle out and pointed to the ground but tight in his grip.

 

“Okay.” Darcy took a breath, steeling herself against the discomfort of sharing this place with the others, seeing its strangeness through their eyes. 

 

School children. Little old ladies with scarves. A beautiful old city with history and people and-

 

“Okay,” she said again, and started forward.

 

The tent town had moved on but Darcy could see the bonfire remained, waiting for its next residents. The landscape around them started to roll into hills, wildflowers growing in neons and grays and glittering jewel tones that bounced light like mirrors. A stone fence wrapped around the base of one hill, curling in and mounting up around a hole leading to a tunnel. Underground, thin, pale figures sat in candlelight, singing in meditation. At the top of another, far off in the distance, there was a standing rock structure with a domed roof. Inside the whispers of every living thing within miles, their breaths and sighs, sounded as close as the listener’s own.

 

And, speaking of sounds…

 

“So, are those birds I’m hearing?” Sam asked.

 

“They are not,” Darcy said. They were rounding a hill and it was going to be in view so she figured she might as well wait and skip the explanation.

 

“You don’t go bird watching, much do you?” Clint asked.

 

“No,” Sam said.

 

“I’m just saying,” Clint continued. “You’re called  _ Falcon _ .”

 

Darcy could hear the moment Steve saw what was ahead because he stopped dead in his tracks and Sam smacked into his back.

 

“What the-! Whoa. Is that…”

 

“Welcome to The Crest of The Female Orgasm,” Darcy announced, still hurrying forward like she might skip how awkward this moment was.

 

Rising up out of the path in front of them was a sea of women, bodies twisting and heads thrown back, legs up over the shoulders of their partners of the moment, receiving oral sex. And some manual. Or with the occasional, previously agreed upon, inanimate object. (Darcy had once met an expert with a feathered quill pen.) But for the most part it was oral.

 

“Are they really…” Lang trailed off, eyes wide, jogging slightly to catch up with the group, helmet dangling from his fingertips.

 

“Having an all you can eat buffet? Yeah.” Darcy said, cringing at herself. “There’s a Door on the side of the tree at the top.” She pointed up at the enormous tree covered in rough black bark and spreading out wide and thick with enough deep green, waxy leaves to provide shade for two thirds of the hill. “That’s our destination. But there’s no real path up so…watch where you step.”

“This is not a real thing that is happening,” Sam said as they reached the bottom of the hill.

 

A woman knelt in the grass just at their side, her blond curls nestled between two dark-skinned thighs, the yellow skirt of a sundress thrown up and over the face of the other woman who moaned beneath the fabric and dug  her fingernails into the ground. Darcy passed them and a man who was nibbling at a blush pink ass as he thrust long fingers inside of the woman who rolled her face back and forth against the grass, lips clamped and letting out little ‘mmp mmp mmp’ sounds against her forearm. One look back found Wanda floating two feet off the ground, red with embarrassment and possible - likely - arousal from all the energy wafting off the hill.

 

“This common here?” Bucky asked, gently nudging Darcy before she stepped on a hand that was clenching in mid-air.

 

“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!”

 

“It’s not not-common,” Darcy admitted. “Most things here are just weird. Sometimes things are a little scary weird. Sometimes they’re…” she gestured around them. 

Sometimes the places in Wonderland were almost spiritual, but she didn’t really want to get into it with the team about that while they waded through a sexual frenzy. And the hill was pretty crowded today. Which just figured with her luck. 

 

A green, slightly scaly woman with lizard yellow eyes was slinking her way backwards up the hill, releasing delighted hisses as a man Darcy distinctly remembered sleeping with slurped loudly from between her legs. God, she really hoped he didn’t look up. He probably wouldn’t. He seemed busy.

 

“How in the hell am I gonna explain this to Laura,” Clint mused, blink rapidly and searching for a safe place to step while trying to avoid looking around at the same time.

 

“I recommend a demonstration,” teased Natasha, making Darcy snort and look back, accidentally catching Bucky’s smirk.

 

Nope. Nope. She was not allowed to think about Bucky smirking while two dozen women were reaching their climax around them. It was just not a safe combination.

 

“Boobs, hey! Boobs!”

 

“Fuuuuck,” Darcy breathed out. She looked around and saw the quintessential California girl - long blonde hair and macrame jewelry and toe rings - propping herself up on her elbows, her bikini top untied to reveal the cluster of maps between her small breasts, as a man with a full, dark beard and no hair on his head applied himself enthusiastically to the bare lips of her sex. They were a few couples higher than where Darcy was working up the incline, which left an unfortunate amount of time to make conversation in her opinion.

 

“What up, Lawyer,” Darcy said, louder, nodding shortly. 

 

Lawyer and Darcy had spent four days Traveling together and the younger girl would not shut up about pre-law. In Darcy’s personal opinion, for someone who was on a pre-law track in college, the girl spent a lot of time at orgies. To be fair, it  _ did _ sound like a stressful course-load.

 

“Did she just call you-?”

 

“Yeah,” Darcy answered Steve under her breath. “We don’t really share names here so people just call you whatever they want.”

 

He looked adorably affronted on her behalf.

 

“Boobs,” Lawyer repeated, pushing down at the back of the bald head in her lap when he tried to surface for air. “Please tell me you are sharing your friends.” The girl waggled her eyebrows and stared openly at Bucky’s cybernetic arm.

 

“Sorry, just passing through,” Darcy said, nearly tripping over two women kissing in the grass, their hands modestly stuffed into each other’s jeans.

 

Lawyer opened her mouth, probably to whine cause that was kind of her thing - ooh, was she feeling bitchy? She was, Darcy realized. She was feeling bitchy. - but whatever Baldy had been working up to finally seemed to catch her attention because she fell back with a sharp squeak and started rolling her hips against his mouth.

 

“I think we should hurry,” Steve said.

 

“Almost there,” Bucky said, nodding up at the top of the hill.

 

“Oh fuck, baby, yes, that’s it, almost there,” A woman chorused from the ground.

 

“Darcy, you take us to the nicest places,” Lang mused from the end of the line.

 

Darcy bit at the inside of her mouth and tried to ignore the burn in her thighs from the climb, the general reek of pussy in the air - man, it smelled a lot better on the ground in her experience, - and the fairly involuntary excitement her body was experiencing. At least she had her regular lack of exercise as an excuse for why she was breathing kind of heavy. Sam could probably not claim the same. 

 

“Try to remember what we’re going to be walking out on,” Steve said aloud to them, as if he’d been following Darcy’s train of thought.

 

Darcy had been trying to keep her eyes focused on the tree at the top of the hill but she couldn’t resist the urge to glance down at the women at the peak. There were only a handful, fully bare and spread out over a bed of their useless clothing. They were glassy eyed and made soft, hoarse, whispers of pleasure, like it was being dragged out of them, as inhuman men trailed grasses across their nipples, paved paths into dark map tattoos with teeth and tongues, and petted gently at swollen and sensitive cunts. She’d heard a rumor that the women at the crest of the hill had been driven to a perpetual state of orgasmic bliss, and based on the dark circles around their eyes and dry chap to their lips, Darcy was pretty sure she believed it. The last time she’d been on the hill she’d seen the men, suede soft skin and smooth brown snouts,  carrying limp women down into the sun to wash and feed them by hand. Darcy hadn’t really been brave enough to take a spot there, and wasn’t sure she wanted to be.

 

“They alright?” Bucky asked as the others trickled up to them, stepping over massive roots until they reached the gap the Door sat between. He jerked his head back behind him to the women but kept his eyes on Darcy’s face.

 

“Yeah,” she said, quietly. “They take care of them when…well when they’re done, I guess.”

 

He had - they all had - stains of red spreading across his cheeks and over his nose but he nodded and faced the Door, expression firming. He shifted and placed himself in front of Darcy, giving her room to maneuver but solidly guarding her from whatever might be outside. He reached back and tugged at where his holster straps met along his spine.

 

“Hang on here, and stay as close to me as you can,” he said. “Step on my heels, I won’t mind.” He waited a beat and then looked back over his shoulder, eyebrow raised.

 

“Oh! Right,” Darcy said, shaking off her nerves. She wrapped a hand around the holster and stepped in close until her breath was rustling at the fabric of his shirt. She could feel the heat of him radiating, cloaking her. He smelled salty and woodsy and sour and it reminded her of driftwood. Her mouth felt dry and her body felt hyper aware, like it was ringing with the notes of ecstasy rising up around them.

 

“Sam, you and Wanda give Clint a lift up to the roof and come down on them. Natasha and I will take the back. Lang, take the front entrance, nice and small so no one can see you. Bucky, you and Darcy cover the square and keep our exit clear,” Steve said. He turned to Darcy, gave her one small, half-hitched smile, and then nodded.

 

She reached around Bucky and opened the Door, the others rushing out ahead of them and Bucky fast behind them, pulling her along. She realized, as she came out in the old district of Bursa, that she might have wanted one more bracing breath before she left Wonderland for people crying in the streets, rushing in every direction, a car skidding against tire spikes and over turning. There was a ring of local police cars on either side of them but the Door sat between and they had stepped out directly into the chaos.

 

“Door!” She shouted to Bucky over the melee, tugging at the straps to stop him as she swung it shut behind her. 

 

There was gunfire and the brick wall, just a yard or so away from them, splintered into the air. Darcy jumped with a yelp, pressing herself close to Bucky’s back as he covered them with return fire and rushed to crouch behind a parked van. Darcy watched as Steve righted the crashed car in the street with a heave, and then Bucky was pressing her between a tire and the street curb, bracing himself around her.

 

“Do we need to be closer?” Darcy asked. She flinched as more gunfire rang out, spitting up gravel from the pavement, followed by screams.

 

“No one’s hurt, they’re alright,” Bucky said. He twisted a little until all Darcy could really see was him, the seams where the plates of metal met and bent at the knuckles on his recently upgraded arm, the leather of his jacket with its thinning patches around his elbow, the dark pricks of stubble growing over his jaw and the way his adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. She looked up and realized he was watching her.

 

“We should stay near here. Keep an eye on your Door. I’m better a better shot with some perspective, anyway. Stay down,” he said and then stood. Darcy leaned back against the van and stared up the long line of him. (Lang was right, there was something to be said for ant’s eye view.) He squinted and braced his rifle up on the hood of the van. Darcy clapped her hands over her ears and he took two, very effective sounding, shots toward the school roof, before sinking back down around her. His knees framed her in her crouch and Darcy tried very hard not to look down to watch the flex of his thighs.

 

“How many Avengers does it take to end a hostage situation?” Darcy joked nervously, pinching at the frayed knee of her jeans. Oh, she wished she hadn’t said that. She hated word vomit.

 

“They’ll be trippin’ over themselves in there,” Bucky agreed. “And Steve’s not a  _ bad _ shot. Even if it does take him a whole cartridge.”

 

Darcy dug her fingers into her legs and tucked her chin to her knees to resist the urge to press herself against Bucky. He was busy. And they usually had a little rickety table between them when they joked around. 

 

“And they have Clint,” Darcy said.

 

Bucky ‘hmph’ed. “He’s a very effective archer,” he said, the last word sounding a lot like a curse. He reached a hand up to the comm tucked in his ear, listening for a moment. “We’ll take care of it,” he said to the team and then added to Darcy, “Okay, come on. We gotta make a stop.”

 

He pulled her up, his right arm wrapped around her shoulders tucking her close to his chest as he ran them around the back of the van over the to car, still dead center in the street. He stopped them at the passenger door.

 

“I’m gonna cover us,” Bucky said. “Need you to check on the people inside. Kids in the back. See if we can get them out and into a shop for cover. Can you help me do that, doll?”

 

“Got it,” Darcy said. She pulled on the door handle and it unlatched. She peeked inside calling, “Lütfen, lütfen,” because it served to be polite in every language and learning ‘please’ was pretty much her first task in any country. “I want to help.”

 

The man at the wheel had a bloody nose and blinked slowly at her.

 

“I think he has a concussion,” Darcy called over her shoulder. She reached slowly out, waiting to see if the man lashed out with fear, but was able to unbuckle him. “I’m just going to help,” she chanted. The man struggled and managed to sit up.

 

“I’ll get him,” Bucky said. “Going round to the front.”

 

Darcy bit her tongue before she told him to stay safe behind the car. “Don’t be stupid, he’s a super soldier. He can handle himself,” she muttered to herself, crawling forward enough to untangle the man from his seat belt. She ducked out of the passenger seat and went to the back as Bucky edged carefully around the front of the car.

 

“Hey kiddos,” Darcy said softly to the little boy and girl in their car-seats, sobbing. “Hey, it’s okay.” She squeezed into the space between the seats and fussed with the buckles. “Oh my god, how complicated do these really need to be?”

 

“Darcy, you good?” Bucky asked, waiting outside the driver’s side door.

 

“Yeah,” Darcy bit out, lifting the little girl out of the car-seat as the little boy unstrapped himself. “Okay, just take my hand.”

 

Bucky pulled the man out of the front seat, half-carrying him, as Darcy and the kids crawled out of the back.

 

“I want you to run, fast as you can, to that shop with the red awning. I’ll be following you,” Bucky shouted. 

 

Darcy cradled the girl against her side, the boy’s arm tight in her hand and ran.

 

“Go, go, go,” Darcy said. The little boy ran slightly ahead of her, glancing back to see if his dad was following, and Darcy heaved him up over the curb with a quick tug so he wouldn’t trip. “Go inside,” she said, letting go of him to swing open the shop door.

 

The door didn’t even finishing swinging shut before Bucky was there, pulling it open and pushing the group of them deeper into the little gift shop. The front window was still standing and the lights were off but an older woman popped up from behind the counter and ushered them forward.

 

“We’ve got the family,” Bucky said over the comm. “In a little shop near our exit...yeah. Glad to hear it.”

 

“They’re almost done out there,” Bucky said to Darcy. “You did good.” He took her shoulders and set her down on the floor against the side of the desk and then sat down to the left of her, his bulk shielding her from the front of the shop. “C’mere,” he said. He wrapped a heavy arm over her shoulder and pulled her close and Darcy took it as permission to curl against his side and rest her head on his shoulder, hair tangling with the teeth of his jacket zipper.

 

“Do we need to go back out?” Darcy asked.

 

“Nope, gonna stay right here.”

 

She sighed, staring up at a shelf with painted wooden dolls in elaborately patterned, traditional dress. 

 

“Would you have told us about that place?” Bucky asked. “If we hadnta needed it today?”

 

Darcy bit her lip for a minute and didn’t answer. There was no more gunfire from outside, no more screaming. Her ears were ringing and her fingertips and toes were cold.

 

“No,” she said.

 

Bucky squeezed her shoulders.

  
  


_

  
  


After the fight ended and the streets were clear, Darcy went back into the gift shop she and Bucky had found shelter in, checked on the concussed dad and the two kids, and then bought five of the little wooden dolls and a box of turkish delights with an untraceable cash card from Clint. The team was waiting for her on the sidewalk outside. Steve fussed with his zipper and Natasha picked plaster chunks out of her hair. The others perked up as she let the shop door swing shut behind her.

 

“So…are we going back the way we came?” Sam asked.

 

“We are not stopping on that hill, Sam,” Steve said.

 

“Man, I did not necessarily mean it that way!”

 

“I would actually like to make a quick stop somewhere else,” Darcy said. “But it won’t take long and…and it’s comparatively normal.”

 

“Lead the way,” Natasha said with a shrug. 

 

“I’ll meet you at the bottom of the hill,” Wanda said quickly, pursing her lips. “Maybe back a ways.”

 

Darcy thought specifically of the route they would take and Wanda watched her face for a moment, listening in on the thoughts, before nodding. The girl deserved a break, Darcy figured. 

 

“Do we need to worry about people seeing us?” Bucky asked, watching the crowds of spectators and bystanders and local authorities.

 

“It doesn’t really matter if they can see us go into a Door that vanishes after we close it, but I think there’s some kind of trick that gives us cover.” Darcy held the Door open while the others shifted through, Wanda in the lead and jetting off down the hill ahead of them. She shut it behind her and took the rear. Natasha bounced cheerfully down the hill, deftly maneuvering around arms thrown into the air and twitching legs. Steve hurried after her, ducking his head like he was trying to shrink and disappear from the open stares directed his way.

 

“Hi. Sorry. Excuse me,” Clint said, scrunching his face up and squinting his eyes so hard he cold barely see the women unraveling around him. 

 

“Ow! Ohhhhh,” one said. “Yes, yes, yes!”

 

“Do you think they have a dude’s version of this?” Lang mused to Sam. “Hey, Darcy! Do they have a dude’s version?”

 

“I have no idea,” Darcy lied.

 

“It’s by Antarctica,” someone answered.

 

“Jesus,” Darcy muttered. 

 

Bucky, just ahead of her, took one long look around and then shook his head, turning and holding out his hand to help Darcy down the terrain.

 

“You learn anything new on this hill?” he asked, eyes earnest and lips twitching.

 

_ Yes _ , she thought.

 

“I taught this hill a few things,” Darcy answered primly.

 

Bucky grinned and called down the hill, “Reminds ya’ of France, doesn’t it Stevie?”

 

“Jesus, jerk!”

 

“Oh come on, Steve,” Natasha purred, waiting on the grass as they all cleared the crowd. “Surely you’re familiar with the concept.”

 

“This is the best field trip we’ve ever taken,” Lang said. 

 

“This could have been the best field trip,” Sam grumbled. 

 

“Come on,” Darcy said, “It’s not over yet.”

 

Bucky dropped her hand, which was unfortunate, so Darcy pushed ahead to the front of the group and started back on the path they’d arrived on. Wanda was waiting for them around two bends of hills, eyes closed and breathing slowly.

 

“Your shields holding up okay, kid?” Clint asked as they reached her.

 

“They’re fine now, but I reserve the right not to make eye contact with any of you for the next month at least,” Wanda answered. 

 

Darcy laughed until it became nearly hysterical and she had to cover her mouth until she could control herself again. Wanda tried, and failed, to bury a smile.

 

Their next stop was a little out of the way, but Darcy wanted to show them one simple, sweet thing in Wonderland. To prove that it wasn’t all sexual or exhibitive. Also, she hadn’t had breakfast before running off to save a small neighborhood in Turkey, and she was really hungry.

 

The market was fairly quiet, which was probably a good thing since they were all a little dusty and sweaty and sometimes the other shoppers could be pretty exotic. Darcy skipped the explanations again and led them into the cluster of tiny wooden shacks. Curtains pushed to the side revealed vendors with collections of glass shards - prisms and lenses and broken bottles. Or items that were only partially complete - a teapot without its lid, a frame that held nothing, a book cover with no pages. Or the blind woman who made exquisitely painted wooden masks without eyeholes, a disguise for the soul as someone had explained to Darcy.

 

She stopped them at the window of a small booth painted yellow with red and black diamond trim, and set down two of the dolls from the Bursa gift shop. The wrinkled old man, perched on a spinning stool with his lap covered by a heavy brown apron that hung down past his feet - if he had feet, Darcy kind of wondered - picked them up and inspected them for a moment before smiling, huge and toothless.

 

“Eight please,” she said, holding up eight fingers.

 

He nodded, spun his stool and immediately began to fry up round balls of dough stuffed with whatever he’d picked for his menu today. 

 

“This is…” Steve started, turning slowly in place as he looked in every open window.

 

“Better than you remembered,” Wanda finished. She was inching toward a booth that was overflowing with unfinished letters. Darcy had spent an afternoon months ago crying over the incomplete apologies before the vendor finally shooed her away. 

 

The old man giggled over his fryer and then dumped hot the rolls, steaming with a tart and rich smell like apples and pork, into a paper lined woven basket. The first time she’d eaten his rolls she’d tried to return the basket and he’d screwed up his face and clucked angrily at her until she’d given up. She traded it later for a fountain pen without a cap that she used to keep notes on the places she discovered. This one she thought she might keep for her table in Iceland.

 

“Okay,” Darcy said to the others. “Let’s go. We can eat these on the way back.”

 

She passed them and felt a soft bubbling in her chest at their shared expression. That wincing gaze, the half-hearted smiles, the long deep breath. The look of wanting to stay.

 

It was one she was familiar with. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to mention in the last chapter notes that the Junkyard is inspired by the Heidelberg Project in Detroit and Dr. Evermor’s Foreverland in Wisconsin (IT'S A TIME MACHINE) and subconsciously, as I realized when JanetSnakehole pointed it out, the Junkyard in the movie Labyrinth. But two of those three places are real and should be visited!
> 
> Also, I forgot in the last chapter that if Darcy was getting naked and hopping in a hot spring with Natasha that her tattoos would be there. And no way would Natasha not be like ‘My, what a big tattoo you have.’ I did a patch edit where Darcy makes an excuse for them.
> 
> And finally, thank you again and again for being so spectacular. I totally lose all sense of cool with comments and kudos! Not that I had much to begin with.


	5. Tattoos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all dazzle me! I'm so glad this story has such a warm and welcoming home, I honestly could not have imagined better.
> 
> Also, round of applause to Janet Snakehole who got this chapter this morning and had it ready by lunch. I've been waiting for work to end so I could come post it yay!!
> 
> The 'After's in the headings refer to After Darcy introduces the team to Wonderland so by the end of the chapter 4 months have passed, just in case those headings get a little wobbly in clarity.

**The Day After**

 

“So…it’s like, your super-power?” Laura suggested.

 

“I dunno, aren’t super-powers supposed to be useful?” Darcy asked, slicing onions for their stir-fry.

 

“You’re the reason those mercenaries are in a maximum security prison at the moment,” Laura said, putting the steaks into the fridge to marinate. She shrugged, “It sounds pretty useful.”

 

Darcy wrinkled her nose and squeezed tears out of her eyes to fight the burn of the onions.

 

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “But, like… say the quinjet had been totally broken down. And the conflict had been in…Stockholm, so, you know, a lot less far away. I would have been useless because the Door for Stockholm is probably a two day hike from us, and that’s if we don’t run into some kind festival or-”

 

“Orgy?”

 

“It’s not _that_ common.”

 

“Don’t get me wrong. I am in favor of the orgies. I would have like to have been _invited_ to the orgy-”

 

Darcy broke into laughter, wiping her eyes on her sleeve “-We did not stop-”

 

“I’m just saying that we keep the talk of your magical, alternate universe super-powers to a minimum around the kids because they are _not_ going.”

 

“I am good with that.”

 

Laura nodded and they both continued to cook a for moment, Darcy’s music playing over a small set of speakers above them.

 

“If you think the orgy sounds like fun you should hear about the brothels,” Darcy said.

 

“You know, I’d almost started to feel bad for you for being out on your own for six months but now I’m just…” Laura shook her head and huffed. She waited another minute before asked, “So tell me about the brothels.”

 

**Two Days After**

 

“Have you told them you know yet?” Darcy asked.

 

Bucky’s face twisted up, eyeing Steve and Natasha playing pool across the bar, Natasha teasing Steve with her form and Steve charming her with his blush and hard gaze.

 

“So much fun watching them suck at pretending,” Bucky said with a shrug.

 

“Are you jealous?”

 

Bucky bolted up in his seat, twisting to stare at her. “You joking?”

 

She shrugged. “I just mean, maybe it would be harder, if you were, having to see them out in the open that way.”

 

It felt important to know, Darcy decided, if he _was_ jealous. She would be a bit jealous if he was jealous. Or just disappointed.

 

“No, it ain’t like that,” Bucky said, shaking his head. He wiggled his nose for a minute, thinking, and Darcy had to look down at the beer bottle in her hand. There was a pile of little shredded bits of paper on the bar counter where she had been absently tearing at the label.

 

“Just don’t want to make it too easy for the punk,” Bucky said. Then he leaned in close, close enough for Darcy to taste sharp hint of whiskey on his breath and the clean, spicey smell of his shampoo. “‘Sides, he’s at least half in love with her. Soon he’ll make a big show of tellin’ me, sayin’ it ain’t fair to treat her like a secret. Then we’ll shake hands and he’ll feel all brave about it.”

 

Darcy laughed and restrained the urge to fall forward against his shoulder.

 

“Still taking care of the little guy from Brooklyn, huh Barnes?”

 

He shrugged and folded his grin around his drinking glass before pulling back. “So how many times has Lang asked you to take him back to that hill?”

 

“Four,” Darcy answered and Bucky snorted. “But Sam’s got him beat at six.”

 

Bucky choked for a moment on his whiskey before laughing. A really belly laugh that gave Darcy shivers and grabbed Steve and Natasha’s attention from the pool table.

 

“Oh doll,” he said, low and slow, “I’m so glad you told me that. Hey! Wilson!” Bucky spun the barstool and got up to saunter over to where Sam and Clint and Lang were getting fleeced in a game of poker by Laura and Wanda. “If you’d been looking for some pointers you coulda just asked…”

 

“Shit,” Darcy breathed, slinking around the bar into the kitchen, deciding it was high time to find dessert.

 

“Lewis!” she heard Sam shout moments later. “You are not a good bro!”

 

**One Week After**

 

“No. No, look,” Clint said, spinning Darcy in place, and lifting up her right arm to reveal a trail of tattoos spanning her forearm before pooling in the curve of her elbow. “We come out of Darcy’s place in Soho and we just take the subway up to Queens where we get back in here,” he tapped at her wrist and then ran two fingers up her arm like a pair of jogging legs, “And we exit here at Melbourne, grab a boat to Sydney and jump back in here.” He turned Darcy again and pointed at a bit of map on her left ribcage, and then followed a path to her lower back. “And boom, we’re in Johannesburg,” he concluded.

 

“That is so damn convoluted,” Sam said. “We can take the quinjet and be there in like, an hour.”

 

“Stealth, man, it’s important,” Clint grumbled. “And this is recon, not a rescue so you’re not even invited.”

 

“There has to be a better way of doing this,” Darcy sighed, arms still raised.

 

“I really like this method,” Lang said, giving her a teasing once over.

 

Bucky reached out and slapped Lang in the back of the head. “Rude,” he growled.

 

“Owww, that was the metal hand, wasn’t it?”

 

She’d drawn a line in the sand which is that she got to wear sleep shorts and a t-shirt while the team discussed what routes were available to them via Wonderland. (They were calling it Darcy’s Place which made her simultaneously cringe and feel a little glow of delight in her gut.) And if the route they needed was hidden beneath her ‘unmentionables’ as Steve had called them, well then they were just shit out of luck.

 

“I think Sam might be right,” Steve told Clint. “All subtlety aside, you’re talking about taking an untrained agent on a mission for upwards of a week, no offense, Darcy.”

 

“None taken,” Darcy said. “Wait. Am I an agent?”

 

“Hawkguy, quit pawing the girl,” Bucky said, glaring at the man. “Her arms are getting tired.”

 

“We’ll get you trained,” Natasha said.

 

“No thanks,” Darcy said. “Can I say no thanks?”

 

“No,” said Steve, Clint, and Natasha.

 

“Of course, doll,” said Bucky.

 

“Hang on, I have an idea!” Lang said.

 

**Two Weeks Later**

 

Darcy’s toes curled against the cool wood of the table top as she tried to hold her stance, left leg pointed out to the side. Natasha pulled the pen back off the tracing paper pressed against the inside of Darcy’s thigh as the table wobbled.

 

“This is taking forever,” Darcy moaned.

 

“This is the last of it and you can’t do it. I can ask Steve or Bucky,” Natasha said, returning to her work of transferring the lines of Darcy’s tattoos onto paper for a map the whole team could reference. “They took art classes, they might be faster.”

 

Darcy tried to imagine Steve laying back on the table, head between her thighs and hand gripping around her thigh, just above her knee. She very actively tried _not_ to picture Bucky there. And very actively failed.God, she really did not need her panties to get wet in front of Natasha.

 

“Do you think he’d even do it? Steve, I mean?”

 

Natasha bit her lip, following a little line that chased a stream up the crease at the top of Darcy’s thigh. “Yes” she said. “But he would probably spend too much time apologizing for any accidental touching.”

 

“If it was your body, on the other hand…” Darcy teased.

 

“He would get distracted,” Natasha said, smirking and making no effort to hide the fact. She thumbed at a soft part of Darcy’s inner thigh making her break out in goosebumps. “Just like Bucky would get distracted with you. So I’m your best candidate.”

 

Darcy pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth to keep from asking Natasha to repeat herself. Would he? Was that general knowledge? It felt new to her.

 

“Turn around and bend over,” Natasha said. “These lines are _everywhere._ ”

 

**One Month After**

 

“Okay I am giving you guys six hours and that is it. We’re meeting back at the junkyard. Also, I want it stated, for the record, that this absolves me of any further Christmas expectations,” Darcy said, passing Sam and Lang each a small, plastic watch ticking quietly away. “Don’t forget to wrap it up,” she added, tossing them each a small box of condoms.

 

“This is so uncomfortable,” Sam said, glaring at Bucky out of the corner of his.

 

Bucky just smirked and folded his arms, standing at Darcy’s side.

 

“Lang, don’t get lost,” Darcy said. “Whatever you do, don’t go to Antarctica.”

 

“Can we talk about why everyone else is on a first name basis with you, and I’m still Lang?”

 

“Ummm…now, though?” Darcy asked, waving at Wonderland around them.

 

“I’m just saying, it feels a little cold. Like maybe we still need to work on our rapport?”

 

“Are you propositioning her?” Bucky asked and Darcy could see that squint in his eyes, the twist in the firm line of his lips that meant he was teasing.

 

“What? No! No- I just - I,” Lang stuttered.

 

“Lang sounds cooler,” Darcy said, trying to hurry the whole thing along. “Scott was the name of my fifth grade crush and he talked a lot about post-nasal drip. We’re fine. I like you more than Sam fifty percent of the time. Also, Sam has a head start on you.”

 

Lang looked over his shoulder to see Sam rounding a bend in the landscape. “Oh! Shit. Cool. I’ll take it on receipt that I can do better than fifty percent. Sammy! Wait up, man!”

 

“We are not doing a buddy-movie thing here, Scott,” Sam answered over his shoulder.

 

“Kids these days,” Bucky muttered, watching Lang run off.

 

“He’s gonna get so lost,” Darcy sighed.

 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, shrugging and dropping his right arm across her shoulder. “Where we headed, doll?”

 

“I’ve got a list,” Darcy said, pulling a scrap of paper out of her back pocket and passing it to Bucky.

 

He read down the line, his smile growing. “The Toymaker’s Tower?”

 

“I thought we could get the kids something there since Pepper can’t get us our shipment in time.”

 

“Lead the way,” Bucky said with a squeeze.

 

**Two Months After**

 

“So,” Bucky panted as they ran down a narrow alley in Dublin. “That training’s working out for you.”

 

“Please don’t talk,” Darcy rasped. “I think I’m dying.”

 

Bucky swept an arm around her waist and hustled her up a thin set of stairs. It was late and everything was orange in the lamp light. He tucked them around a corner of the landing, pressing her against the wall. Darcy held her breath, her lungs burning and her eyes tearing, as two sets of footsteps ran past their hiding place. Bucky’s right hand was warm on her side, the metal of his left cooling at her neck, probably taking her pulse.

 

“Are you hurt?” he whispered a minute or so later.

 

Darcy shook her head, trying to gasp for breath as quietly as possible.

 

“Easy,” he murmured, splaying his hand over her stomach. She shuddered as she tried to control her breathing. “That’s it. You did good.” He pressed a kiss to her hairline and Darcy gave in to the urge to curl her fingers around the arm holes of his vest and pull him closer to her, burying her face against the skin of his neck.

 

“Hey,” he soothed. “I’ve got you. Natasha’ll be back on base in a week or so and you’ll be off duty.”

 

Darcy steadied herself, but decided she liked where she was and Bucky only waited another moment or so before wrapping his arms around her back. He shuffled his feet and then they were one mass together against the wall, his pelvis pressing just below her belly.

 

“It’s not that I don’t like the adventure,” Darcy said, savoring the flavor of his skin as she breathed. “I just really hate running.”

 

“For what it’s worth,” Bucky said into her hair, and she could hear the drop in his tone, the quiet growl that hadn’t been there a minute ago, “You’re my favorite mission partner.”

 

Darcy smiled and they stayed in place there, in the dark on the stairs, bodies twisted up in something between innocent and explicit, until a little old woman grumbled past them to the alley.

 

“Come on,” Bucky said, easing back slowly, one limb at a time.

 

“We need to find the Door again,” Darcy finished for him.

 

**Three Months After**

 

Darcy finished her wander around the cramped bookstore, a nice pile of things to take back to the base in her arms. She found Wanda curled up in a raggedy teal armchair in a narrow hallway filled to the brim with bookshelves and piles overflowing to the floor. There was a book of poetry in her hand, but her eyes were closed and her head was tilted and Darcy figured the psychic must have heard a train of thought she wanted to follow. Darcy took a seat and found herself face to face with a book of interviews with Edward Gorey. Steve needed this, she decided. He liked witty recluses.

 

She wished Bucky had been able to come with her for this. She like Wanda, of course, the girl was sweet as pie and the most easy going person on base, which was amazing considering what she had to deal with. But she was quiet and Darcy liked to talk and Bucky seemed to always be the first to listen, and then to answer in a way that made her laugh. But Steve and Natasha had taken him off on a _mission_ mission on the quinjet.

 

Wanda snuck up on her, light footsteps disguised by the rain falling on the brick road outside.

 

“You never ask me about him.”

 

Darcy looked up from the book in her hand as Wanda settled herself on the step below her.

 

“I- I…Does he ask about me?”

 

Wanda smiled, eyes laughing, and shook her head. Darcy felt like she was going back in time to high school, a teenage giddiness bubbling up in her stomach. Except that Bucky didn’t make her feel bubbly. He made her feel charged and electric, constantly looking for someplace to land the energy burning through her muscles when she was around him.

 

“Do you want to ask?” Wanda pushed.

 

Darcy opened her mouth to say ‘Yes, tell me. Tell me what he thinks about when he looks at me, when he touches me.’ Then she shut it, teeth snapping, fanning the pages in her hand with her thumb.

 

“I think I want him to tell me,” Darcy said finally.

 

Wanda looked pleased, relaxing against the stair railing, her back curling over a small stack of books behind her.

 

“Do you get tired of keeping other people’s secrets?” Darcy asked.

 

“No, it’s not so bad,” Wanda said. “It’s like keep tracking of characters in stories. I get tired of keeping my own. But so do most people. Except Natasha.”

 

Darcy snorted and leaned against Wanda’s shoulder for a moment until Clint’s head popped out from the end of the hall, dripping rain water onto the threadbare old carpet.

 

“Paris is pissing on me,” he announced.

 

Wanda and Darcy helped each other stand from the stairs.

 

“This is what happens when you wait until the last minute to buy your wife a Valentine’s Day gift, bird-brain. You can’t pick your weather.”

 

“Also, when you leave the umbrella at the bookshop,” Wanda added, lifting it up in her hand.

 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on. These pastries have a wife to please.”

 

**Four Months After**

 

Darcy spun the cake on the little plastic stand one more time, looking for some bare patch of frosting that she could add a swirl or a dot. Looking for some excuse to stay up a little longer, listening for the quinjet to land. Her music played quietly from her phone on a shelf, well below a volume she would have chosen under normal circumstances. With one last flourish along the bottom edge of the cake Darcy was forced to consider the cake finished.

 

She stepped back to admire her work and huffed. It was, by far, the most elaborately decorate cake she’d seen outside of a magazine. And it definitely didn’t say ‘Bucky.’ It had several hours ago when it had been a simple chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and light piping around the top edge. And maybe even an hour or so after that, an hour or so after the team was meant to be back on base, when she’d added a pool of caramel to the top and a white, cursive ‘Happy Birthday, Buckaroo.’ And maybe even more so fifteen minutes later after she’d scraped off the ‘aroo’ in favor of a ‘y.’

 

But now?

 

Now it was just a warning lesson in how many different styles of piping _not_ to use on a single cake.

 

There was a mechanical hum outside, and the hiss of the hydraulics landing on the hill and Darcy released a long sigh. She lifted the cake stand up off the kitchen counter and out to the bar. It looked monstrous, the lamps casting twisted shadows of the roses growing in waves up the sides. Darcy had a brief panicked moment, wondering if she should just grab a knife and smear her evening’s work into a messy ‘low-key’ look. Then the door to the bar open and Bucky jogged in, clothes torn, a black stain that looked like it’d been a small explosion across his metal bicep, face still healing from a black eye and torn cheek.

 

“I got carried away,” Darcy blurted, hands raised, stepping back from the cake like a criminal caught in the act.

 

Bucky cocked his head for a moment, eyeing her - oh god, she was covered in flour and cocoa and powdered sugar and had totally forgot that she meant to change - and then the cake. His eyebrows raised and he came forward, fingering a curl of tempered chocolate until it crumbled in his dirty palm. He lifted it up and tossed the pieces into his mouth, grinning.

 

“This looks amazing.”

 

The strangest part, in Darcy’s mind, was that she was pretty sure he was serious.

 

“Can we- I hate to cut it, but can we take it to go?” Bucky asked.

 

Darcy blinked. “Go?”

 

“Yeah! Oh I- I forgot to ask. Can we go to Wonderland?”

 

“Wonderland?” she echoed.

 

He blushed, and already his black eye had faded, the green of the bruise contrasting with the pink of his cheeks. “That’s what I call your place.”

 

“Me too,” Darcy said. She felt a little dizzy. Or a little like she was floating.

 

“Yeah? Are you tired? We could wait. I just kinda wanted to sneak out before Stevie noticed.”

 

“Nope, I’m good,” Darcy said.

 

She was exhausted. But Bucky wanted to go to Wonderland, and it was his birthday and he wanted to go with _her_. And not the others. So she nibbled a few chocolate covered espresso beans off the top of the cake - she had really gone overboard and god bless Bucky for not saying so - and he grabbed tupperware to pack up two large slices. She went into the kitchen for privacy, peeling off her t-shirt covered in the spoils of baking, and slipped a sweater on. When she came out he was dropping the tac-vest onto a table and buttoning up the cardigan she had knit him for Christmas, and managed to finish before February. Bucky passed her his leather coat to shrug her arms into as they went outside. It weighed a ton - she wondered if he’d forgotten to take some of the weapons out of their hiding spots - and she was swimming in it, but it had that dry, salty smell of him and was still warm.

 

“Will they mind?” Darcy asked.

 

Bucky took her hand as they hiked through the icy slush covering the hill and Darcy wasn’t sure if he just expected her to slip, or if that was the pretense they used to touch one another.

 

“I left a note,” he said. “And we can make it back before morning.”

 

“You sound like you have a plan.”

 

“No more than we usually do.”

 

Spring was coming and the ice cascade in front of the Door was just beginning to thin. Cracks were appearing through the spears and delicate drips of melting water pooled in the stream below before freezing again at night. Bucky gestured Darcy ahead of him and she opened the Door in on the Junkyard, a warm curl of air carrying smoke and sweet honey spilling out to greet them.

 

“Bonfire, you think?” Bucky asked leaning into a wisp of perfumed smoke as Darcy clicked the latch shut behind them.

 

“Probably,” Darcy answered, retrieving Bucky’s hand in hers. “I went to a party there at night once.”

 

“A party, huh?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting and lips twitching.

 

“Not that kind- well, no I guess it did end that way.”

 

She tucked her chin to hide her blush. It didn’t bother her exactly that Bucky was pretty well aware of what she’d been up to before landing in Iceland. But she also acknowledged that her Traveling behaviors, while perfectly within her rights, were a little out of character. It was freeing to be anonymous. And Wonderland didn’t always feel real. Okay, it rarely felt real. Not after you’d walked outside of it.

 

“Well it’s my birthday, you know-”

 

“You don’t say.” She laughed.

 

“-And I might be in the mood for a party.”

 

Darcy swallowed her first response, which was surprise. Bucky generally preferred the quieter adventures when they came for fun. Groups of strangers were, understandably, not his forté. But he’d been changing. He still came by her house with whiskey and cards, but more often than not the cards were forgotten in favor of conversation. He teased her, and he tortured Sam in a relentless retaliation for the months he’d let the Falcon go unchecked. So if he wanted a party…well she could handle that.

 

“Then let’s go find one.”

 

Bucky scooped up an old felt hat from the path, bent beyond any recognition of style, and they picked their way carefully out of the familiar path.

 

“Stuff get moved around in here?” Bucky asked, eyes narrowed out over the gate on their left made of broken up neon signs.

 

“I think so,” Darcy said. “It’s hard to tell because it’s hard to remember exactly where everything was the last time, but I always seem to see something new.”

 

“But who does it?”

 

“Oh, yeah, I don’t know. I heard them working once, but that’s all.”

 

Bucky hummed, turning around in step, like he was checking for the mysterious Junkyard worker nearby. His hand stayed relaxed in her grip even as he studied their surroundings and Darcy squeezed when they reached the gate. They crossed beneath the gate and the party, or whatever it was, sounded out from around the hills.

 

“Is that music?” Bucky asked.

 

“That’s probably subjective,” Darcy answered.

 

Wonderland was blue with clouds, the heightened brilliance of the stars burning holes through the billowy cover, spears of light glancing against the grass like soft spotlights. They passed under one and Darcy looked up, catching Bucky’s glance. She tried to bury her smile, and he nudged her with his shoulder. His bruises and scrapes had vanished, the only shadow remaining was the stubborn stubble he never managed to shave entirely away.

 

There was a shrill howl, followed by a cackle of laughter interrupting their gaze as they both looked ahead. The Bonfire was visible, and the swarming, spinning, sillhouettes of bodies cloaked in black night and red fire danced to something that fell between folk music and animal screams. Darcy glanced at Bucky out of the corner of her eye, trying to gauge his response. He looked startled, faltering in step for a moment, before a grin spread across his face.

 

“Now I wish we’d brought Stevie,” he said. “Just for the look on his face.”

 

Darcy snorted and together they picked up the pace.

 

_

 

They had danced, the mass of people around the bonfire spinning in circles that turned in on themselves and then out again, with Bucky keeping a firm hold on her hand no matter which way the crowds split and sprang back together. They’d only meant to dance for one song, just to goof off, and it was a least a half hour - if the burn in Darcy’s chest and the pang of her feet were anything to judge by - before they realized that there wasn’t a _song_ there was just music. If that’s what it was going to be called, which Darcy suspected it really _wasn’t_. At least not here.

 

So Bucky pulled them out again and they found a patch of grass away from the stamping feet. Darcy lit a twig in the bonfire and carried it back to their spot, catching the flame on a small candle and setting it on top of one of the large slices of cake. She watched as Bucky closed his eyes, thick shadows of eyelashes resting on his cheeks, and then opened them again and blew out the flame. He looked up, the lick of smoke framing one side of his face, and smiled, soft and a little shaky.

 

“I forgot forks,” Darcy said. Then she thought about smacking herself in the face.

 

Bucky grinned and shrugged, dipping his fingers into a layer of the chocolate cake and popping a chunk into his mouth. “S’overrated,” he said, sucking at a streak of frosting on his thumb.

 

“So true,” Darcy said, mostly to herself, before grabbing a bite by hand.

 

They ate, side-by-side, watching the dancing around the bonfire, Darcy’s cheeks warming with every happy hum from Bucky’s lips. She tried not to imagine what it would feel like if Bucky were licking at the crumbs and sticky sugar off of _her_ fingers. And then she just went ahead and imagined it in great detail, so much so that she wasn’t really paying attention when an enormous cry of excitement rose up from the crowd.

 

“Whassat?” Bucky asked, wiping chocolate off his mouth on the back of his hand.

 

“Hmm? Oh!”

 

There was a throne, carried up above the heads of the crowd, on the shoulders of six large men.

 

“Is that a palanquin?” Darcy asked.

 

“Who’s on it? They got royalty here?”

 

“Pfft.” Of course, now that Darcy thought about it, maybe they _did_. She hadn’t really even thought there was _goverment_ here, which was just fascinating, really, from a poli-sci point of view.

 

“Come on,” Bucky said, pulling her up by her elbow. “Let’s go see.”

 

Darcy carried the cake. They got to the back of the ring of revellers as the palanquin came around the far end of the bonfire and approached them. Perched carefully in the glittering and gaudy seat, framed by gold griffins and a wall of carved roses, sat a squat older woman wearing plain trousers and a absurdly, and somehow exquisitely, feathered robes. Plumes of jewel bright feathers arched up from the collar, tangling in the curly gray hair pinned carefully back from her face, a crown of laced gold and silver and wood circling her head.

 

“Hey!” Darcy said, pointing up at the woman.

 

The woman’s gaze skimmed over the crowd until she glanced down at them and laughed. “Hi honey,” she called, as the massive men with downy fur proceeded past them.

 

“You know her?”

 

“She was the first person I met here,” Darcy explained. “Come on.”

 

She pulled him by the hand around the edge of the circle, following Curly Gray’s procession until the attendants stopped and lowered the throne to the ground. The woman rose up from the seat, spreading her arms out until the massive sleeves hung down like wings. The hem of the robe trailed behind on the ground, too long for the woman by several inches.

 

“What’s she doing?”

 

Curly Gray was sort of prancing, the crowd pulling and shifting away to give her room until they’d wiggled themselves out and Darcy and Bucky were in the front of the ring. She hopped from one foot, bowed, and then hopped to another and spun. It was remarkably silly looking, the robe dragging and tangling behind her feet, the crown wobbling on her head as she bent, but the crowd watched with a devoted interest.

 

“I have no idea,” Darcy whispered.

 

Bucky’s hand released hers when she was too distracted by an odd sort of shimmy that Curly Gray was delivering, and then his arm was around her shoulders, tugging her into his side.

 

“Gimme a bite of that cake,” he whispered.

 

Darcy balanced the container in her left hand and brought up a bite with her right. She’d meant for him to take it from her, which he had, but by leaning down, catching his teeth around her fingernails as his tongue flicked against the pads of her fingertips. Her body released a _zing!_ of electricty, and then a throb between her legs as his lips kissed, or brushed, or soothed over where his teeth had nipped.

 

“Hey, honey.”

 

Darcy jumped, bumping Bucky on the chin with her knuckles, and found Curly Gray standing in front of them, her performance ended and the delicate crown between her outstretched hands.

 

“It’s your turn,” Curly gray said.

 

“My _turn_?” Darcy asked

 

Curly Gray took a long blink and shook her head slightly. “I’m here to pass the crown,” she said slowly. “It’s. Your. Turn.” And with that she stepped forward, settling the crown on Darcy’s head.

 

Darcy turned to look at Bucky who was tucking his lips between his teeth in an effort not to laugh. Curly Gray shrugged off the robe and pulled Darcy forward by the hand still decorated with cake crumbs. Bucky grabbed the tupperware out of her hand as Curly Gray shoved her arms into the sleeves and twisted them around, leaving Darcy in the open spread of the circle, her audience surrounding her.

 

“Wha-”

 

“Dance,” Curly Gray ordered.

 

Bucky stuffed his face with cake, filling his laughing cheeks.

 

“Ummm…”

 

Darcy shifted a bit in place, and farther off in the crowd a drum beat sounded. She turned, hoping someone might come rescue her because Bucky was clearly a troll and could not be trusted, and something with strings whistled. An instrument, or a keening grizzly bear, hollered into the air and Darcy sighed. Fine. She would dance.

 

She closed her eyes and attempted a very pathetic pirouette. The crowd cheered and behind that she could hear Bucky’s low laugh. She skipped around the circle, swinging and flicking her arms in the air. She did the Lawn Mower, and the Swim (including the Snorkle), and the Supermarket, until Bucky’s laughter was louder than the revelers. Then she went in to the center of the circle and spun and spun and spun until she thought she could not stop and until the crowds of people were spinning around her too, and until Bucky came and caught her by the waist before she toppled over. He lifted her into the air and she shut her eyes feeling the world spiral around her and when he set her down again she was steady.

 

The left the rowdy celebration around them just in time for the clothing to be shed, and found Curly Gray relaxing in the grass, eating what was left of their cake. With a fork.

 

“So,” Darcy said. “Am I…like, Queen now?”

 

Curly Gray stared at her for such a long time that Bucky covered his mouth with his metal hand and had to turn away. “It’s symbolic,” she said. “An older woman passes the crown down to a younger woman. Come on, take those off. They’ll take care of them later.”

 

“Oh,” Darcy said. She elbowed Bucky, not at all accidentally, as she shrugged her way out of the robe. She folded it up carefully, trying not to bend feathers, and then set the crown down on top.

 

“This was good,” Curly Gray said, handing back the tupperware and tucking the fork into her hair like a pencil.

 

“Thanks, I made it for his birth-”

 

Curly Gray sighed and passed them. “No details, honey.”

 

“Right. Well, thanks for the humiliation,” Darcy answered to the woman’s back. “See you next time.”

 

She lifted a hand in farewell.

 

“I just want you to know that thanks to the serum, I will never have the misfortune of forgetting that,” Bucky said.

 

“Oh, fuck you,” Darcy said, but it lacked heat.

 

They turned back to the path together and started home, ignoring the new kind of dancing going on at the Bonfire. Inside the Junkyard again, Wonderland went quiet and Darcy could feel the tired ache settle into her body again. She leaned into Bucky’s side even though the path was barely large enough for the both of them and felt like she was sleeping walking her way back to the Door.

 

“Doll,” Bucky whispered, and then he shook her, gently, by the shoulders. “Doll, look.”

 

She took a deep breath, trying to rouse herself, a little sedated by the warmth and sweet smell of Wonderland. She followed Bucky’s pointed finger over a pile of doll houses filled with figurines, to a blue light in the distance. A tall street lamp sitting in an open heart of the Junkyard, glowing down on a man dressed in the hand-me-downs of trash around them who was carefully planting faded silk flowers into the floor of old colanders. A muted meadow spread out around him as he paused in his work, tilting his head to the side before turning and looking directly back at them.

 

Bucky tensed and held his breath as Darcy studied the man, his enormous blue eyes and bony bird-like shoulders. His mouth was wide as he smiled at them, a very small nod in their direction, and a gap in his teeth glinting in lamplight. Darcy felt like she’d swallowed her own tongue so she nodded in return and then pushed Bucky gently along the path.

 

“He’s working,” she whispered.

 

They made it back to the Door and Darcy was still startled, and sleepy, so she didn’t notice right away. The dolls slept soundly around them.

 

“Darce,” Bucky said.

 

Darcy looked around them. “Oh, right,” she said, moving to slip behind the table.

 

“Wait,” Bucky said, voice rough and tight. Darcy waited and finally noticed the skittish look on his face. She opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong when he spoke again. “M’ gonna grant my wish,” he said.

 

Then his hands were framing her face, one cool and gentle, the other warm and thumb pressing firmly to tilt her chin up. His head lowered to hers, mouth resting softly against her lips. He released a shaky breath, tasting of chocolate and Darcy dropped the tupperware with a dull _thunk_ to the ground. She wrapped her arms over his shoulders and pulled herself up to press against him. That was enough. Bucky’s metal arm braced her hips against his and their lips slid together in a kiss, rich with the flavor of cake the bitter taste of each other.

 

Her heart pounded in her chest, blood rushing the sound into her ears until there was a steady tattoo, a rhythm to press and pull to. Bucky hummed happily into her as she tangled a hand into the hair at the back of his head and she released a whimper at the back of her throat as he licked gently at the seam of her lips. She gasped and he kissed a trail from her mouth to the line of her jaw, pulling her tight in a hug and stopping finally at the corner just below her earlobe. The prickle of his stubble tickled at her neck and she pressed her nose into his, sucking in breaths full of the driftwood smell of him.

 

“Happy birthday,” she whispered.

 

“Yeah,” he said.

 

They stayed entwine a for minute longer before he set her back on her feet, leaving one last kiss at the hinge of her jaw, before nudging her to the Door. It was nearly morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are magic!! Please let me hear from you, I am absolutely addicted and I adore you.
> 
> I kind of can't believe that I've been writing fast enough to deliver a chapter a week but I'm enjoying the pace. That said, I am going out of town next weekend without cell service or internet and the next chapter has A LOT HAPPENING (plot/wonderland/EMOTIONS wheeeeee!) so I will try to have it ready and out before I leave but it may take until I get back to finish. Just a heads up. 
> 
> Smooches by starlight to all of you!


	6. Invaders You Invited Here As Guests

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS LIKE KISSES!! You are sooo amazing. I cannot tell you (I will later though) what your responses have meant to me.
> 
> Chapter title is borrowed from Fingerhold by Ramona Falls (this song/album/band is my fight song and the full line of that lyric is just A+++)
> 
> You guys, I have been super fussy about this chapter and then today JanetSnakehole was like "Maybe it's two chapters?" And I was like "OHHH yeah." So this might seem smaller than I promised but I will have the next chapter up within the next couple hours. But I'm going to take advantage of splitting this up to make it just an ounce prettier if I can. Cause you guys are worth it and so much more.

“Darcy, are you covered?”

 

Darcy scrambled behind a door frame as a Doombot with his cape charred and half blown off stomped past her in the dainty alleyway. Because in Bruges even the alleyways looked like something out of  an adorable clockwork toy.

 

“Darcy?” She could hear the sharp urgency in Bucky’s voice.

 

“Yes,” she hissed over the comm. “Yes, I’m covered.”

 

There was a pause as he weighed her answer. “Comin’ to you.”

 

“Bucky, I’m fine,” Darcy said. “Just finish what you’re doing.”

 

“Actually, Darcy, I’m bringing the team to you,” Steve interrupted.

 

“What? Why? Are you done?”

 

“We’re gonna draw the Doombots out of the main square. I want to see if we can lead them through the Door, fight them without the collateral damage.”

 

“Wait…What?! Absolutely not-”

 

“Darcy it’s too crowded here, if we can move locations we stand a chance of actually saving the city  _ without _ losing a life or destroying property for once. It’s worth it.”

 

Darcy opened her mouth to give Steve the nastiest and most vulgar approximation of what she thought he was worth in that moment, but Bucky skidded around the corner of the alley at that moment. And despite the anger boiling in her veins like a kettle that was about to scream, there was a sudden gladness in seeing him. It’d been a busy month and they’d only spent a handful of hours together outside of a mission since they’d kissed in Wonderland. 

 

“I’m not opening the Door for Doombots,” Darcy said. Her body was stiff and braced against the chance that Bucky would try to persuade her.

 

He jogged up to her, rifle in his cybernetic hand, and his free arm wrapped around her shoulders. Darcy found herself at eye level with a nasty gash on his bicep. He pressed his nose into her hair and then dropped a quick kiss at her temple and her body eased, without her permission, into his chest.

 

“‘Course you’re not,” he said. “Now stay close, I want you on my six.”

 

Darcy sighed. She was keeping this one. She turned, setting her back against his, and fisted her improved (by Pepper (aka Tony)) taser in her hand. Slapping feet approached the alley and Darcy shifted in place the edgy expectation of a fight–from Steve or the Doombots or, more likely, both–making her dance on her toes. 

 

“Darcy! The Door!” Steve barked from Bucky’s front.

 

“Fuck you,” Darcy bit out.

 

“Easy,” Bucky murmured to her over his shoulder.

 

“Told you that wasn’t flying,” Clint said to Steve before shimmying up a series of window frames onto a roof.

 

“Darcy, there are civilians-”

 

“On the other side of that Door,” Darcy said over Steve. “You are  _ not _ introducing them to Doombots.”

 

“What about the people inside these buildings?” Natasha asked Darcy.

 

“I evacuated them when we got here and had Pepper put Stark Insurance on the block.”

 

Natasha nodded, satisfied and shrugged at Steve before positioning herself in a doorway. Darcy could almost hear Steve grinding his teeth as he pushed past them to the far end of the alley.

 

“We’ll discuss this later,” he said.

 

“You bet your tight ass we will,” Darcy snapped back.

 

Sam snorted and shrugged off his wing-pack. “Unlike some people,” he said, eyeing Lang as he shrank down in his suit, “My specialty doesn’t really lend itself to cramped spaces.”

 

“Well that’s something we’ll have to address in training, isn’t it Wilson?” Bucky asked brightly.

 

Sam went to back up Wanda at the other end of the alley, grumbling under his breath. 

 

Darcy watched as the first of the Doombots rounded the corner and Wanda fried its circuitry with a red flash and the flick of her wrist.

 

“You should be up on the roof, too,” Darcy said to Bucky as he shrugged his rifle onto his back and pulled two handguns from their holsters.

 

“You should be safe on the other side of that Door,” Bucky answered, quiet enough for just the two of them. “Think either of those things are likely to happen?”

 

Maybe, Darcy thought. Maybe if she didn’t have a bone to pick with Steve and wasn’t worried about  _ Captain America _ (because Nomad or not he was still that) thinking she was cowardly, she  _ would _ wait for the team from behind the Door. She would be fussing and worried and considering opening the Door every other minute to check on them, but she would probably wait the fight out from safety. Oh well.

 

“Nope,” Darcy said, just before Bucky took a shot, nailing a Doombot through its eye. It crumpled to the ground in front of Steve. 

 

“I had that covered,” Steve barked over his shoulder.

 

“Just keeping things efficient, punk.”

 

Darcy expected things to be more chaotic, really. But the Doombots were only coming from two directions and with the entire team in place at once there was a pile-up of mechanical VonDoom replicants at either end of the alley. Her taser was tight in her hand, charged and buzzing and just begging to be finally used, and it didn’t seem likely that there’d be an opportunity. Not unless Natasha ran out of Widow’s bites.

 

“This is kinda boring,” Darcy mused. “Is this usually kinda boring?”

 

Bucky huffed, took another shot down the alley, and shook his head. “You sure that little cattle prod of yours is gonna fry a Doombot, doll?”

 

“It’s part of the warranty,” Darcy said. Mythological beings from space and super soldiers were too, but she was keeping that tidbit to herself.

 

Bucky laughed. “How about I just make it up to you later?”

 

“Fine, but I hope you have a plan because I am not that easy to impress.”

 

“Been plannin’ for months, doll.”

 

Darcy was not ashamed to admit that the gravel in Bucky’s tone at that statement absolutely sent shivers through her. She really hoped his plan included measures taken to remove pants because they hadn’t gotten there yet. She had nothing against being kissed and caressed for an hour and change but patience was not only not her strong suit, it was one of her greatest failings. She was ready to lock Bucky in a room with her at a Wonderland brothel. She was 88.5 percent sure he would not mind. 

 

The train of thought was too distracting and Darcy almost missed the glimmer of metallic cheekbone that peeked out a window of the apartment across from her. A Doombot appeared, swinging open an alley door and Bucky was busy covering Steve. Darcy ducked under his raised arm, rising up in front of the Doombot who had been focused on the Winter Soldier and not the small girl behind him, and jammed her taser into the underside of its chin. The kickback was stronger than she expected, probably due to the way the Doombot seemed to clench and seize in response to the voltage before falling back into the apartment where another Doombot was waiting to come through.

 

Darcy was yanked back to Bucky’s left side, his arm swinging in front to cover her.

 

“I had that,” Darcy said.

 

“I know,” Bucky said, but she could see his pulse jumping in his throat.

 

Still, he let her put down two more Doombots. It wasn’t quite as easy catching them in a weak spot when Bucky had himself placed firmly in front of her, but she appreciated the caution after a faster than usual Doombot made a leap for her and found Bucky’s metal fist wrapped around its throat. He shoved the bot against the wall, chipping the brick, and Darcy went for the Ken-doll groin, Bucky releasing it in time to avoid the shock.

 

“We’re clear here,” Sam called from the end of the alley.

 

“You look good from above,” Clint added.

 

“Check inside the buildings,” Bucky said.

 

Bucky brushed his metal hand against hers before walking down to Steve who was tossing Doombots, with more than usual vigor, back into the street for the city officials to destroy. Darcy moved out of the way for Clint to jump down, positioning herself in front of her Door. Lang burst back to full size in front of her, palm raised.

 

“Way to stick it to the man,” he said, waggling his hand.

 

“Call Steve ‘The Man’ to his face,” Darcy said flatly.

 

“I meant the gendered noun,” Scott said under his breath as he moved away. 

 

Darcy rested her head against the wood of the Door and closed her eyes, trying to make a list in her head. Nasty names she wanted to call Steve, points in her argument against him, places she could go instead of staying in Iceland, visible skin where she wanted to kiss Bucky. The last list was to help keep her calm and remind her that Iceland wasn’t so bad.

 

“We’re all set, Darce,” Clint said and she blinked her eyes open.

 

The others were approaching from either end of the alley and no one looked quite up to celebrating. Scott, Sam and Wanda were all exchanging their stares from her to Steve and back again. Bucky seemed to be watching for her to explode, his eyes fixed to her face and brow tense. Natasha was, more subtly, doing the same with Steve who kept shifting his fists from his hips to wiping his palms down the legs of his suit, eyes fixed on the ground. 

 

Darcy stepped out of the way and swung the Door in letting the team pass in front of her. Steve brought up the rear and Darcy toyed with the idea of shutting the Door in front of him and letting him find his own damn way back to Iceland. But Natasha was probably not above forcing her to go back and retrieve him. Steve paused at the Door.

 

“Inside,” Darcy said.

 

He huffed and slipped in sideways, ducking his head. She followed and the Door clicked shut behind her. The team was waiting for them on the other side, pretending to admire the scenery as they waited for the show to begin. Ahead of them men and women sat on a river bed where the flow gleamed iridescent like gasoline puddles, dipping fabric and garments and shoes in and pulling them out again a new color. A woman with cinnamon red skin admired the indigo color of her jacket before sinking it in and pulling out a honey gold. Steve was watching their progress, lips tight and a knot between his eyes.

 

“Okay,” Darcy said. “Lay your noble reasoning on me.”

 

Steve rolled his eyes, and then his shoulders before turning to speak to Darcy, fists falling to his hips again.

 

“I know that I’ve made the choices that led me to this, but I  _ do _ have a responsibility to protect the citizen of Earth to the best of my abilities.” He opened his mouth to continue and Darcy decided that, no, maybe it was rude but she didn’t really want to hear it.

 

“I have a responsibility to this place,” Darcy said, sweeping her hand over to the river. “There are  _ people _ here too, Steve. People who would not have known the danger they were in if you let a crowd of Doombots in, hoping you could keep an eye on them and make sure that none ran off.

 

“Did you even think about what might happen if Von Doom found out about this place with that connection he has to his bots? Next time if it’s AIM and we drag them in? How about Hydra, Steve? Let’s ignore the fact that they would have the same means of escape and travel that I’ve afforded to you. What would they do to the people living here? Traveling here? Do you know what would happen to people like me?” She shoved the sleeve of her sweater up to reveal her tattoos. “I know that you aren’t capable of the kind of manipulation it would take to make me open a Door, but I don’t think you can say the same about Hydra, am I right?”

 

She couldn’t look at the others. She couldn’t look at  _ Bucky _ . She could barely force herself to stare steadily back at Steve who had red stripes of anger–or shame, she didn’t care–across his cheeks.

“And finally,” Darcy said, her voice shaking with the effort to not shout, to keep their conversation private from the people at the riverside, “What kind of fucking idiot are you to think that there wouldn’t be consequences for you, and for me, letting Doombots in? I don’t mean Von Doom consequences, I mean  _ in here _ . Do you honestly think they wouldn’t mind if I abused the Doors in that way? Why do you think this is such a nice, peaceful place? Is it because it’s pretend, magic? This is real, these people are real, and you’d have to be crazy to think they don’t have a way of dealing with violations to the environment here.

 

“So, final word. You are a  _ Stranger _ . I am the Traveler. No one decides who I open Doors for but me. If you ever make me regret showing you the way in again I will walk through and lock you out and Natasha and Clint won’t get the chance to drag me back.”

 

Steve gulped, then chewed at the inside of his cheek. “I-” he started.

 

“Are you about to apologize?” Darcy snapped.

 

Steve’s eyes bulged and he held up his hands, “Yes! Can-”

 

“Save it for later,” Darcy said, turning away and starting on the way back to the Junkyard. “I have the right to stay mad at you for now.”

 

“But I-”

 

“Dude,” Darcy heard Lang whisper. “I really wouldn’t.”

 

Darcy’s hands were shaking and her stomach felt like it was about to try and refund its last meal. The corners of her vision were blurry with stinging tears, which made it easier to ignore the rest of the team as she moved around them. A glint of metal appeared on her right and she bit down hard on the inside of her lip. She waited, breathing slowly through her nose, trying to keep a lid on the tears and the scream and the sick nervous feeling all spiraling inside of her. They would ask her to leave. She shouldn’t have made an ultimatum. Bucky would never forgive her for going off on Steve that way.

 

His metal arm reached out and she flinched and then immediately hated herself for it as he hesitated. 

 

“I- I didn’t mean,” Darcy tried to say, but it was all breath and squeak.

 

He stepped closer and his hand settled at the center of her back. “Take a deep breath,” he whispered. “The others are a ways back, it’s just us.”

 

Darcy sucked in a gasp and released it in a wet sob.

 

“Nice and slow,” he coached, the hand running a path up and down her spine.

 

She repeated the breath, and the sounds shook in her chest but she managed to slow down.

 

“It’s important to keep the punk in line,” Bucky mused at her side. His cybernetic hand on her back coached the air through, down from between her shoulder blades to the base of her back for an exhale, up again for inhale, slow and smooth. 

 

“He’s gonna send me back,” Darcy whimpered.

 

Bucky snorted. “There’d be a mutiny.”

 

“You can’t fight with Steve,” Darcy said, hiccuping on an inhale. “Your undying love for each other is legendary.”

 

“Huh? No, you just keep breathing and I’ll tell you how it’d go. Laura’d bleach his suit, strategically, maybe some awkward placements or maybe it’d just ‘turn up’ in the red load and go pink. The kids and Clint would booby trap Steve’s place. Wanda’d make him relive all his life’s humiliations. Did ya’know she threatened me with that when I ate all those turkish delights you got her?”

 

Darcy hiccuped again, this time mid-laugh.

 

“It’d be Natasha he’d really have to worry about,” Bucky said ominously. “Now I can’t really speak to what they get up to together but I’m sure she could make life difficult for him.”

 

“I’m not convinced she’d care,” Darcy said.

 

“She adores you,” Bucky said. “It was her idea to bring you on in the first place. Said she’d never gotten to work with you before.”

 

“Okay, quit turning the world upside down,” Darcy said. “What about Sam?”

 

Bucky made a rude noise. “Who cares about Sam? Ask what I’d do.”

 

Darcy tucked her smile down. “What would you do to Steve to impress upon him the mistake of making me leave the team?”

 

“Nothin,” Bucky said, grinning. When Darcy scoffed he added, “I’d be with you. Seein’ if I could convince you to forgive Steve his inherent bullheaded foolishness and generally just enjoyin’ myself. You’d drop of me off in Iceland every so often so I could rub it in, right?”

 

Darcy laughed for real this time.

 

“What do you think of letting the others out at the falls and then the two of us going off on an adventure?” Bucky asked. 

 

Darcy nodded, still smiling. 

 

At the Junkyard Door, Darcy announced that she’d be following through later with Bucky. The team looked expectantly to Steve. When he paused for a breath, Clint elbowed him sharply in the side.

 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said in a rush, before glancing nervously around him at the others. “I was being short sighted in regards to the consequences. I  _ do _ have a difficult time considering this place…real, and concrete. I’m very literal-minded and this place is…the opposite of that.”

 

Darcy watched as Lang mouthed the words along with Steve and the others watched him with a fixed interest like they too were making sure he said exactly what he was supposed to. 

 

“I would never want to do anything to jeopardize your safety, or your participation with the team. You’re a valued asset and a friend and it’s important to me that you trust both of those things as well as me.”

 

For all that she was sure everyone but her and Bucky had a hand in that speech, Steve delivered it with the sincerity he was famous for. 

 

Then he added, “I won’t make an order like that again, Darcy.” Natasha narrowed her eyes and Darcy took it to mean that Steve had gone off script.

 

“Good,” she said. 

 

Everyone held still for a moment, eyeing each other.

 

“Aren’t you guys gonna hug it out?” Lang suggested.

 

Darcy shook her head as she reached out to open the Door for the team. If someone had asked her a year ago how Avengers solved their personal disputes she probably would have answered ‘punches and pints’ because that was still roughly how Thor went about things. She never would have imagined group mediated apologies. If someone suggested that they now try a ‘trust exercise’ she was going to write a tell-all exposé. 

 

Natasha winked, and Clint ruffled her hair, and Sam fucking Wilson gave her a fist pound as he walked through the Door. It was almost galling except that her chest was warm and she found her face wrestling a smile back into submission.

 

Steve walked through last, taking Bucky’s rifle with him and hesitating in the Door frame before adding, “Bring him back in one piece.”

 

There was a smirk on his face and he was looking back at Bucky with a laughing glint in his eyes. Bucky muttered an insult from over her shoulder and Darcy shut the Door wondering how much  _ planning _ Bucky had actually done and if Steve knew about it too.

 

“So, where to, good lookin’?” Darcy asked.

 

“Well, back in my day,” Bucky drawled, swinging his arm over her shoulder.

 

“Right, cause you’re  _ old _ ,” Darcy said.

 

Bucky nodded solemnly and then continued, “We liked to take our best girls out for the finer things in life, dinner and dancing and the like.”

 

“I take it I’m the ‘best girl’?” 

 

“The very best,” Bucky confirmed, stopping them in a ring of feather boas and dusters and fans to press a kiss to her lips. Darcy took advantage of the opportunity, rising on her tiptoes to press into him until he cupped her face in his metal hand and pulled away. “Kisses are for the end of the night, doll.”

  
Darcy wrinkled her nose at that but settled back onto her feet. “Fine. I am pretty hungry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More soon! Leave me some sugar while you wait cause we'll need it for the lemons that are coming!! 
> 
> LEMONADE.


	7. Smoke As Black As Lace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you dive in, make sure you're in the right place because I posted two chapters in a row this evening! Read Chapter 6 first!
> 
> And-  
> 1\. I am extremely happy I took the time to go through this chapter again.
> 
> 2\. Chapter title borrowed from Big Drift by Jamie Lidell which is a great song for the first part of this chapter. River by Leon Bridges is a great song for the second part of the chapter too. Both are just generally great.
> 
> 3\. OMG I AM REAL NERVOUS BOUT THIS CHAPTER.

Bucky led the way for their evening, which delighted Darcy. He’d clearly picked out their destination ahead of time and chosen a route that led them through a road lined by trees, some breed that crossed a weeping willow with wisteria. He kept an arm wrapped around her and asked her about meeting Thor and Jane, and let her ramble about the transformation of the music industry since the popularization of the internet. He told her about the little jazz and big band acts he’d seen in tiny clubs in Brooklyn and across Europe. 

 

When they walked up to the collection of tree-house-esque structures Darcy had mentioned once in passing–she’d had a food revelation there in her early Traveling days–the feeling of this being a Date really settled in. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been on a Date, not with the capital ‘D’, not where one party planned it to specifically cater to the other party’s tastes and pleasures. They were both dirty from the battle in Bruges, Bucky in full tac gear and Darcy in her tac pants because that was all she had time for, so at least she could feel a  _ little  _ casual about the whole thing. She still really liked the idea of locking Bucky in the brothel with her, but this definitely had merits too. Dinner was another revelation, full of flavors they couldn’t put names to but made a game of trying. Bucky paid with a collection of touristy key-chains he must have been hoarding from various recent missions.

 

“I gotta say, you’re doing pretty good for a nonagenarian,” Darcy said. They were walking back the way they came and Bucky’s hand was on her back, two fingers slipped under her shirt brushing softly at her skin. She was leaning into the touch.

 

“I age well,” he said with a smirk. “And we still have dancing to go if you think you can keep up with this old man.”

 

“You’ve seen me dancing, right?” Darcy said. “I’m pretty sure I can’t keep up with anyone.”

 

“I’m a good lead,” he said, taking her hand and twisting her in slow circles in front of him as they walked.

 

“Is this… how you get the girls… dizzy for you, Barnes?” Darcy said between laughter and tripping feet.

 

Bucky stopped her spins and pulled her close. “Generally, it was more like this.” He wrapped his left arm around her waist and shuffled her tighter against his chest, his free hand against her face, thumbing at her cheekbone. He had that steady, focused, fascinated look on his face that sent his eyes flicking from her hair to her lips to her neck and then tight on her gaze. His tongue peeked out, wetting his lips and when her gaze drifted there a smirk bloomed.

 

“It’s pretty effective,” Darcy mused, wondering where the ground had gone beneath her. 

 

“Not makin’ moves for fun, Darce,” he said, his voice catching in his throat.

 

Darcy startled, meeting his stare again. A little knot of tension sat between his eyes and she stretched up to her tiptoes, and then pulled him down an inch because the jerk was tall, and kissed there.

 

“I know that,” she said. “I’m not here to pass time, either.”

 

His mouth trailed warmth across her cheek, and then her lips, and then her jaw, before he pulled away. He turned them back to the road where they could see a small parade leading to the Bonfire.

 

“There’s our party,” Bucky said with a nod.

 

“Oh!” Darcy took one look at the smattering of small torches bouncing along the electric pink horizon of the sunset and stopped in place. “Ohhh, nope, nope, that’s not a party, Bucky,” Darcy said, wincing and running ahead to keep up with him.

 

“Seems like it’s always a party around here,” Bucky said, grinning. “See? Music.”

 

And there was music playing, something light and frothy with trills and notes that swayed and wove together. But the woman at the front of the parade, hunched and frail with shaky steps, was dressed in a white sack without sleeves and had a crown of branches wrapping around the top of her head and down over her face. 

 

“That’s a funeral,” Darcy explained. Bucky paused in step, scanning the group.

 

“Where’s the body?” He asked.

 

“So, yeah, it’s something that they do here, for  people from, like, another galaxy who come here for this, but um…she’s, it’s the woman in the white sheath. She’s not dead yet,” Darcy paused her ramble, hoping Bucky would talk over her, but his forehead just wrinkled and her mouth wouldn’t quit. “It’s kind of like with the Vikings, where they light a pyre, except that she’ll go on willingly. It’s not as awful as it sounds! I think they do something so that she doesn’t feel it, or, I dunno-”

 

“You’ve been to one before?” He was moving forward again with her steps stumbling along beside his.

 

“Yeah, accidentally, but it was…I don’t know how to explain it. It was really intense but…I’m glad I was there? When the…deceased burns, everyone at the funeral breathes in the smoke and…remembers. It’s like having another life that you’ve lived and can recall but that you don’t carry around with you all the time. It’s like, you keep their memories for them, so their feelings and experiences don’t die with them.”

 

She looked away from the procession to Bucky who had stopped walking. His metal hand was clenching at his side and his stare ran too long and distant to be focused on the group of attendants ahead of them.

 

“We should go find somewhere else,” Darcy said, quietly, like leaving might recapture the light mood they’d had.

 

“Can we stay?” He asked.

 

She stared at him. “You want to? Are you sure?”

 

His hand relaxed and he shook off the hard expression on his face to look back at her. “Would you go to another? If you got the chance?”

 

“I- yes,” she admitted under his honest gaze. “It was very moving.”

 

“I’d like to go,” he said.

 

And she believed him. “Okay, the closer we are to the fire, the stronger the memories are, so you choose where to stand.”

 

If he really wanted to experience this, that was the best control of the situation she could offer him. 

 

Bucky lead them to the edge of the crowd around the Bonfire, back a few feet from the last ring of observers. A platform had been built on the opposite side of the flames with a long, fire-proof plank leading into the heart of the fire. Darcy studied the attendants, the small cluster closest to the platform. They stood, swathed in white to match the woman as family, with soft empty and crowned with antler-like arrangements of branches. The rest the audience were Travelers of every kind, several faces Darcy had seen before, eager eyes watching the old woman as she was helped up the platform one tottering step at a time. Some in the circle were tearful, some smiling softly, kindly. 

 

She remembered when she spent days in a row in Wonderland wandering from one Traveling pack to another, catching word of events across the map. These funerals were coveted news and there were Travelers who tracked them like prizes and stood against the heat of the fire, nearest to the smoke and breathing in deepest.

 

Bucky clutched her hand as the woman reached the platform, her family stepping back, retreating down the stairs again. Darcy wanted to tell him 'it's not so bad, you almost won't realize' but the only sounds around them was the crackle of the fire, the whisper of clothing. So she squeezed back as the field watched the woman take soft shuffling steps into the flames.

 

Darcy's last funeral had been for a man who lived at sea, a sea where boats met daily like neighbors passing by to say hello or steal a cup of sugar. He'd hosted a collection of lovers throughout his life, men and women who had loved him more than the open body of changing waters that held up the boat, and who had left when he could not say the same. Darcy had felt that, that old story of men who married the water, the sea, the ocean, the sailor's life. The devotion to the currents and the winds and the guidance of the stars. The willingness to let the whims of his mistress shepherd him through life. At the end, when he was too sick to survive the storms on his own, he ferried back to land, found a son–his son, he hadn't known–and an old lover who brought him through the Door to die.

 

Darcy could hear the first deep breath taken in unison the field, the smoke billowing up from the woman in the fire. Bucky turned into her and they watched each other, Darcy checking for any signs of anxiety. He bent his head and pressed a kiss to the top of her head as the first sliver of a memory twisted in.

 

_ Picking orange berries in the woods behind the house. Getting sick until she thought she might die alone, tucked behind a tree, hoping mother wouldn't find her first and give a lecture. _

 

_ A bright blue dress, perfectly soft, with pearl buttons and a yellow bow. It only fit for a single summer. _

 

_ Saving a den of newborns, little gray things like foxes, from the pack of gangly limbed boys that roamed the fields and being scratched to bits for it by the mother. _

 

_ Her first kiss and the hand that cupped between her legs as she rocked against it. _

 

_ The sharp stab of grief watching her mother walk into the fire and then the memories, her mother’s, her grandmother’s, more women whose names were never mentioned but their histories flooded her. _

 

Darcy reeled at this and Bucky leaned back against her. Was that what family felt like? Invisible chains you pulled at, clung to, tried and failed to break, followed home again?

 

_ Another lover, this one rougher and more thorough. The sharp pain and relief of a destination. He tasted like iron and he rubbed her back raw against a coarse carpet. _

 

_ Children never happened so she found a place in the fancy houses where she could keep expensive company with men she liked. _

 

_ Nieces and nephews and cousins removed to dote on, stroking her fingers across their hair, pretending not to hear the mothers waiting in the other room, pretending they were hers. _

 

Bucky keened softly at the back of his throat and Darcy wiped her cheeks against his sleeve.

 

_ A younger man, a decade or two, with white blond hair and a too soft face that liked to nestle between her thighs like a little animal searching for its home. He came back and back and back again for years until she learned to love him. He took her home and taught her to sew and she taught him to set snares with his delicate fingers. He played something like a piano and she rocked above him at night, his face soft and happy as she moaned and begged and dug down with her hips for something sex would not give her. _

 

_ He was gone now. And a month alone was enough. It was time. _

 

The memories settled, finding themselves somewhere tucked away and harmless. Darcy felt like herself again, wiping streaks of heartbreak off her cheeks. There was a bitter relief of remembering that she didn't want kids, not as far as she knew anyway, and that Eska's aches were removed from her own again.

 

"Are you alright?" she asked Bucky, not ready to meet his eyes.

 

"I...yeah. M'alright."

 

His hand stroked her back and she turned to him. Something overlapped, Eska's warm need for Jonah (and Davies and the boy who petted her through layers), and Darcy's earlier wishes to just  _ be alone _ with Bucky. Their hips met in an unconscious attempt be closer and then Darcy pulled back again. She glanced over her shoulder and there were similar gestures around them, brushes and touches, and bodies bending closer to one another.

 

"This about to turn into something else?" Bucky asked.

 

"I don't think so," Darcy said, watching the crowd shift together and apart and back. "But maybe we should go."

 

Bucky took her hand, their fingers tangling together, fussing at each others skin, and they moved back to the path. The silence buzzed between them. Darcy struggled with the urge to pull away and run back to Iceland and the urge to push them both back into the grass and kiss along the collar of his shirt and at the seam of his lips until they peeled themselves out of clothes and dove into each other. Out of the corner of her eye she could see aborted attempts at speech, watched him swallowing back words.

 

"So," Darcy offered, "Before...that, what did you have planned for the end of the night?"

 

Bucky huffed a laugh and scrubbed his hand over his face. "Walk you back to your door, like a gentleman."

 

"Would you come in if I invited you?"

 

He smiled and nudged her with his shoulder. "Doll, I'd follow you anywhere." He nodded his head back to where they'd come from. "Clearly."

 

“I’m sorry, I know that was-”

 

“Shh.” His hand pulled her closer. “You warned me it would be intense and it was but…but, like you said, I’m glad I was there. We were there. That she…had us all at the end.”

 

Darcy nodded. That was how she felt after her first funeral, folded into a life and unable to regret being there to say farewell.

 

“So you’ll walk me to my door.” She said, “And then what?"

 

He blinked and his eyes settled warm and dark on her face but he didn't say anything and she was nervous so the words bubbled up.

 

"I want to ask but every way I think to say it feels so...silly, like a script,” she said, her voice getting tight. Would you fuck - have sex with - make love to - me? She couldn’t fit her mouth around the words.

 

Bucky stopped them, Junkyard gates in sight, his large hands framing her waist as he crowded closer.

 

“Darcy, you can have anything you want from me." His eyes fixed to her face, flinty and sharp, cutting through the ease she was trying to paint over her anxiety.

 

That nervous little voice sounded from the back of her head that this was an exaggeration and there had to be somethings outside of that offer. But Darcy felt pretty sure she wouldn't ask for those, and also,  _ shut up already _ .

 

She leapt up and he caught her, pressed her against him. The kiss was tight and firm, lips slotted together and holding on to one another, his hair tangling in her fingers and one leg trying to wrap itself around him.

 

"I'm greedy," she mumbled into the kiss. "I want pretty much everything."

 

Bucky held her closer, kissed her harder until their tongues brushed each other and his licked gently behind her teeth, sending her into unexpected tremors.

 

"Not here," she said pulling back for breath and then whimpering as he nipped a trail down her throat. She kicked her hips against his to grab his attention and nearly lost her own at the electric shock of friction. He hummed into her skin, low and rumbling like a laugh, and the sound turned to liquid gold between her thighs.

 

"I want to know it’s real," Darcy said, trying not squirm as he traced the line of her jaw with sucking kisses. "I know Wonderland  _ is _ real, don't tell Steve I said that, but I just need-"

 

Bucky pulled back, grinning. "You nervous? Cause you're rambling about Steve and-"

 

"Okay, I'm messing this up, put me down." Every cell in her body was vibrating with excitement and nerves and the urge to go faster, faster, but she felt like her brain was tripping over itself and ruining everything.

 

Bucky just smiled and refused to let go. “You’re not messing anything up, just distracting me," he said. He set her down to her toes. "I want to take you home too, doll. I just forget where that is when you've got yourself wrapped around me."

 

The spikes of tension in her settled if only by a fraction and she said, “It’s that way," pointing toward the Junkyard.

 

"Uh huh, you're very cute," he said.

 

But he tucked her under his arm and they pushed forward through the gates into the weaving paths. There was a close call when Bucky lifted her up over a cascade of cutlery in the path and she found being face-level convenient for kissing. His boots cut through the forks with a clatter as he followed and Darcy managed to unstrap the front of his tac vest before he turned her to face the path with a tug of her braid and a swat on her ass.

 

He kissed her again at the Door and this time neither one pulled away. He had her braced on the side of the frame, her hand fumbling at the knob as he sipped at her lips and pulled her breath from her lungs. Her hand slipped again and again and she was about to give up when it finally, mercifully, unlatched and swung in. 

 

“You should just know, before I forget my brain completely,” Darcy gasped, dropping her head back so Bucky could pant and tongue softly at her pulse, “I’ve got a clean bill of health and I’m protected against pregnancy.”

 

Bucky froze, stiff against her for a moment, before he leaned back to grin and lifted her up with his left arm around her hips and walked them out under the streaming falls. He turned and Darcy caught the Door with the toe of her shoe and swung it shut. He pressed her back into the wood–always warm to the touch like it was streaked with sunshine–and braced her there, surrounded by his heat. The backs of her hands clutching at his neck were tickled with the chilly spray of the waterfall.

 

She pulled the heavy tac vest off his shoulders, groaned when he dug his hips into hers so he could pull his arms through and toss the vest to the dry ground outside. He was calling words into her skin as her hands found paths to his shoulders under the white T-shirt from any possible direction–under his hem, down through his collar. His snuck under her sweater onto her waist, thumbs pressing up under the wire of her bra into the softness of her breasts. Darcy could feel the sounds she was making rising up in her throat but break of the falls into the rock below them drowned everything out. She hitched her hips against his, rolled them until she could feel him, hard, hitting perfectly against her, heat building stunningly quick.

 

"C'mon...take you...bed." Most of his plea was interrupted by the water streaming and splashing, curtaining and covering them from Iceland outside, moonlight glittering through like a shower of silver sparks.

 

Darcy pressed her face against his, scratched her nails lightly over his back and chanted, "Here, here, here, please."

 

She could feel him tense, prepare to pull away, so she nipped at his earlobe and whispered a reminder that he’d promised her  _ anything _ , which he probably couldn’t hear. She felt the released groan against her throat and then one hand - soft, warm, calloused - snuck between them, dipping into her wonderfully stretchy mission pants, skirting under the thin cotton of her panties and seeking out heat. She shouted, and that she was sure he could hear, as a rough finger found her clit and rolled it with perfect pressure. She shivered and bucked against him and he shifted her up until his fingers were sliding against her, dipping inside. He pulled the other hand out from under her sweater, bracketed her to the door between his hips and his hand and her arms over his shoulders. Cool metal pushed her collar down to the side, stretching until his mouth was against her clavicle, biting softly across the line of bone and down to flesh of her breast, following the edge of her bra.

 

She braced her hands on his shoulders and worked herself down onto his hand, eyes falling shut and her forehead dropping into his hair, breath panting against soft strands. Threads of pleasure teased at her core, the stretch of his fingers inside of her and the wet trail of his kisses freezing in the air like visible marks on her chest. His fingers curled in, thumb rubbing back and forth and around her clit in a steady pattern that seemed to build up the waves, slow and thick strokes of fever and toe-curling thrills. His stubble scratched, her skin flaring with the burn, until he’d managed to nudge the cup of her bra away to the side and latched his lips around a pebbled nipple. His tongue flicked in tandem with his hand between her legs. She wondered if she would be embarrassed later at the nearly savage way she shuddered in his grasp, straining for more until she could feel herself quiver and clench on his fingers. She cried out as she felt the orgasm pulse out, rippling down through her legs, curling up her spine as she twisted against the door. Her fingers dug into the skin of his flesh shoulder and her nails caught the grooves of the metal.

 

“Bucky, need you, honey…” She was mute under the roar of the water.

 

She opened her eyes to find him watching her lips, his fingers sliding out of her and stroking along her hips. His face was flushed and he surged against her, his tongue delving into her mouth, stroking along hers. She felt him shimmying her leggings down, over her hips and knees to where they caught on her boots around her ankles. She folded her legs up, setting her feet against the wood of the Door for leverage and he held her up with his hands underneath her ass. Bucky nipped at her chin and brushed his nose against hers, and it was so dark she could only just make out the expression, the fold between his eyes, waiting to see what she wanted. She reached between them to feel him through his pants, the buckle undone. She kissed him, soft and wet and slow, dazed and loose from cumming, as she lowered the zipper and worked fabric down his hips. 

 

His eyes fluttered shut as she wrapped her fingers around his base, slipped her nails through the coarse hair there and made him jump against her. She squirmed and he helped her fit against him, shifting her in his arms until she could rub her wetness against the length of him, arching her back against the door as the tip of his cock pressed between them. He pushed in, eyes opening to stare down at the shadows between them and all the explicit implications. His mouth fell open as she pushed back, feet against the door, fingers tight on his shoulders, wondering if she’d get to see the bruises she left.

 

His arms bounced her slightly in place, letting her fall lower onto him and she could feel the vibrations of their groans. He wrapped his arms tighter around her as he pulled back and sank forward until their hips touched and he rested against her, kissing and licking at her jaw and her cheek, nuzzling against her ear. She pushed into him and he lifted her up and then pulled her back down, hips sliding together. She tugged on his hair, sighed against his temple, a bead of sweat or dew from the falls gathering on her bottom lip. 

 

Between the Door and Bucky and her leggings trapping her ankles together Darcy could barely find the leverage to urge him into anything more than a slow slide out and sink in. She tried little snaps of her teeth on his bottom lip and nails in his shoulders, tried curling her legs into new positions, but she could feel his smile on her skin and the smooth glide of him inside of her stretching and filling but not hitting with the pressure she needed. 

 

She put her lips into his ear and begged. “Bucky, please, honey. James. James. 

Fuck, I-”

 

“Jesus.” 

 

She wasn’t sure if she heard it or not but in the next moment Bucky was snapping into her, her head falling back against the door, his hands digging into her hips to pull her down onto him with sharp, quick precision. He stepped back, pulling her hips with him and letting her fall just an inch until the new angle was pushing inside of her, digging into a spot others had only met in passing and without the perfect regular rhythm Bucky had found. Darcy reached back and found the top edge of the Door to hold onto as she tried to meet his thrusts with her own. But her legs were shaking and sound was rushing hard into her ears and the moonlight was flashing.

 

Bucky leaned forward, hips rocking, and lapped softly at the indentation between her breasts. Darcy let go of his shoulder in favor of pulling him in closer by his shoulder and then he was deeper, tighter inside of her and she was falling apart, sliding against the Door, prepared to crash because the last few minutes were worth it. 

 

He had her, arm under her hips and another - the metal one, cold now from the night air - running up the length of her spine. His voice rumbled against her throat as his thrusts stumbled and then staggered into uneven hitches hitting hard inside her. His face cracked in agonized relief and he leaned forward, sagging them both against the wood. She could feel his thighs tremble between her own. She combed her fingers through his hair, left a band of kisses across his forehead as they came down from the high together, mouths melting together in wet caresses.

 

He took them, on shaky steps, out from under the falls, pulling his pants up slightly and then turning and sitting down on the grass with her spread out over his lap. He smoothed her bra and her sweater back up over her shoulder, setting his lips to the hollow of her throat. She stood, winced at the wet slick that followed and he reached up with a handkerchief from his pocket–she blinked at this, it felt more like a magic trick than a practicality–and wiped away the mess before stretching her pants back up her legs for her, another kiss dropped on her pubic bone.

 

Darcy bit her lip, fighting her archnemesis - the crippling stabs of insecurity that bubbled up after she gave up honest, open bits of herself to others. She wondered if she should have let this happen later, or in a bed like a normal relationship. If it meant something less now.  He nudged her chin up with his hand, folding the handkerchief away and back into his pocket. He tilted his head when she met his eyes, swallowed the apology she’d been about to share with a slow kiss, pulling her close until they slotted together, him arching over her like a shelter.

 

“Home?” he asked into her ear, before slipping the lobe into his mouth. She sighed, and his arms enveloped her. She nodded into his neck and he ushered them down the hill back into the little town where the lights in the houses were all out.

 

“You still inviting me in?” he asked, fingers toying with her hand. 

 

She smiled and caught the tease of his smirk out of the corner of her eyes. “Depends on your ‘goodnight kiss’ skills,” she said.

 

He scoffed but said nothing else.

  
His skills were excellent, not that she was especially surprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, real talk. You are all the best. I got some disappointing (expected, but disappointing) writing related news last week and I had a couple mornings where I woke up and thought to myself 'I think I might just be grumpy and sad and not work on writing today.' But I kept thinking about how great you all are when I wasn't expecting this story to go over very well, and how much I really love writing it because of you. So yeah. Thanks! You saved a (two actually cause I split them up) chapter. Go team!
> 
> In other news! DID YA'LL SEE THAT JANETSNAKEHOLE GOT THE LATEST MCUWINTERSHOCK AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT ON TUMBLR?? I'm not on tumblr but she told me about it so I went to see it and just, she is... you guys, she is so cool. I heart her times a million.


	8. Hear You Say (You're Mine)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's all get married. I love you.
> 
> Notes: The Brotherhood of the Badoon is an actual Marvel thing, but if you are an expert on them you will probably be sorely disappointed in my misuse. I tried to go with some lesser known aliens!  
> Any science term Jane uses is pure gibberish. (If it isn’t pure gibberish then I am the chimpanzee who just wrote Shakespeare on the typewriter.)
> 
> Chapter title from To Hear You Say You're Mine by Candi Staton

“Bucky,” Darcy moaned as the quivery glow of a building orgasm skidded away again. “You’re being mean.”

 

“M’not,” he said, rubbing his cheek against the inside of her thigh, stubble scraping hotly, making her twist and arch on her mattress. She lifted her head to glare at him, which was useless because one look at his bare shoulders nestled between her thighs, his hair curling around his ears, had her right back on the edge again. He smirked, staring back at her as he leaned down to suck a kiss at the crease where her thigh met her hips.

 

Darcy keened and fought back a litany of accusations. Because she absolutely wasn’t going to tell her POW boyfriend that he was torturing her. Even though he kind of was, if the feverish trembles running through her were any indication. Bucky’d spent the night making a game of the weblike map of tattoos on her body, driving her to the edge and then drawing answers and stories out of her. But she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that she was absolutely _down_ with him figuring out his kinks, especially if one of them included him teasing her on the brink of pleasure for going on an hour. Even if she was dripping into her sheets. She knew the magic word to end the game.

 

It was ‘Baby.’

 

He turned into an obedient, desperate ball of man when she called him ‘Baby’ and it _fascinated_ her.

 

Bucky sat up, carrying her right thigh over his shoulder with him, settling close, his fingers barely brushing against the slippery wetness of her pussy. “What’s this here?” he asked. He was tracing a scribbled black ‘S’ that snaked around the inside of her knee, curling against bone and eventually trailing to the sensitive skin on the back of her leg, his metal index finger stroking there. The thrill that followed made her foot twitch against Bucky’s back.

 

Darcy hissed, turning her head to try and hide in the pillows there. Her mouth fell open as two fingers slipped inside her, pumping twice before stilling.

 

“Doll,” Bucky prompted, with a ‘tap tap’ of his finger on the soft underside of her knee, and a twist of his knuckles buried in her cunt.

 

Darcy grunted and squirmed, uncertain if she was trying to work herself closer or retreat.

 

“It’s a, it’s a book shop,” she managed to pant out. Bucky ducked his head down, slipped his fingers out of her and then swirled them over her clit once. He stopped moving again and Darcy lifted her head off the pillow to find him watching her, one eyebrow raised.

 

“Ugh, you know I’m going to pay you back for this, don’t you?” Darcy asked. He grinned and sat his head against her knee, waiting. She would try, but he would love it. The man had infinite patience and a singular ability to make absolutely anything she suggested work as well for her as it did for him. It was staggeringly addictive.

 

“It’s the first place in Wonderland I ever went,” Darcy said. His hand went back to stroking her lips, just too firm to be a tickle that might throw her over the edge, too soft to keep from pushing her there. “It’s…the books were… fuck, they were candy and I ate one. Bucky, Bucky…”

 

“Shh,” he soothed. He mouthed at the soft flesh resting against his cheek, making wet sucking sounds against her skin, drawing his hand away from her throbbing core to draw sticky concentric circles on her other thigh. “Tell me about the shop.”

 

Darcy growled, her teeth biting hard on her bottom lip before spitting out, “I didn’t know where I was and the owner was mad at me and I didn’t have anything to trade. He still doesn’t like me. I spent the night in a barn full of giant cats. Bucky _please,_ honey, I’m so close. Please.”

 

Bucky shrugged her leg off his shoulder and spread himself out over her, the weight of him almost _almost_ enough to get her off. He held her hips firm between his hands, raising his own up and away so that she could feel the brush of his arousal growing against her but couldn’t take advantage.

 

“How old were you?” he asked.

 

“Huh- What- Bucky, it was last year. Baby, _please_.”

 

His wicked, teasing expression melted to extreme fondness - Darcy was calling it extreme fondness because he hadn’t said the other thing yet and she hadn’t said it either. His hands slid under her hips, lifting her up until he pressed in. She felt tight and burning hot from the last hour’s treatment, and she bit her lips together, muffling a shout to a high hum of need.

 

Bucky kissed at her tight-closed lips and pulled her in closer until he was settled to the hilt, coarse hairs tickling at her over-sensitive skin. Darcy released a gasp and wrapped her hands around his face, leaving  loose kisses against his mouth as she begged in nonsense words for some release from the rope of tension that had twined around her body. He slid a hand between them and rubbed, reeling back and thrusting in long even strokes that pulled and dragged inside of her.

 

What Darcy expected to snap inside of her instead built up, washing over her like a wave in slow motion. Her hands shook and fell to the pillow and Bucky swallowed her sobs and gasps and moans as she shuddered around him.

 

“…My good girl, Darcy…feel so good…”

 

She caught the words as she waited to come down, and nuzzled against his face. He pulled his hand away before it became too much and braced himself against the mattress. It was a few steady rolls of Bucky’s hips before Darcy realized she wasn’t quite coming down, not all the way, and every hitch of his hips against hers was something halfway to release again. She hooked her ankles together at the base of his back and he grunted, dropping his head to her shoulder.

 

 _There_ , she thought, _I can make you make sounds too_.

 

She pushed her palms against the wall for leverage and pressed herself back against him with every stroke. Her breasts were dragging against his chest, sticky with sweat and she thought she could feel their hearts pounding together.

 

“Jesus,” he whispered against her throat.

 

“C’mere, baby, look at me.”

 

Bucky shivered against her but lifted his head and even in the dark she could see the black of his pupils blown wide, the streak of flushed arousal across his face. His tongue peeked out to wet his lips on a pant and she darted up to catch it in an open kiss.

 

“God, Darcy…”

 

“You’re so good, baby,” she told him.

 

His eyes squeezed shut and his right arm trembled at her side as his hips hit hers erratically. She wrapped one arm across his shoulders, let her hand squeeze at his metal bicep.

 

“So good,” she repeated and he fumbled to cover her lips with his.

 

She felt him flood her, a warm burst and hips snapping in short, hard thrusts. Her orgasm snuck up on her, flashing out in bright colors behind her eyes. She knotted her arms and legs around him, cried out in the kiss. For a long moment she couldn’t feel the lines between them for how tightly they pressed together.

 

Somewhere in catching her breath again, Bucky untied her from around his waist and turned them so she was draped over his chest. She twirled the hairs at the base of his neck around her fingers and he made happy little ‘hmm’ing sounds against her forehead. She leaned up to kiss the dimple on his chin and he spread his left hand possessively across the center of her back, pulling her closer for a long, lazy kiss. She smiled against his lips. The sex could be pretty unpredictable but _this_ , this was the routine. A ritual of affection that had been set in place since that first night that he had brought her home from the falls and they’d discovered that the ceiling in her loft bedroom was too low for gymnastics. (Although it was the perfect height for Darcy hold onto a beam while working herself over on his lap.)

 

She settled back onto his chest, tucked her face against the side of his neck so she could feel his pulse against her forehead.

 

“Didn’t realize you’d only found Wonderland last year,” he said, voice drowsy with satisfaction. “How’d you find the Door?”

 

Darcy swallowed. “It took me awhile to sort it all out. It wasn’t the first gold door I’d seen. I just assumed it was…like, a secret Freemasons things. Or just a popular color for doors. The Door in Thailand was just the first one I had a reason to open.”

 

“What was the reason?” he asked.

 

“Someone was knocking,” Darcy said. It was the truth.

 

Bucky stilled under her for a moment, before wrapping his arms around her and turning them over on the bed. He sat his chin down on her sternum, kissing absently at her left breast.

 

“Can’t keep a secret from the world’s deadliest assassin,” he said, smiling like a little boy hoping someone might offer him candy.

 

Darcy bit at her lips to fight off her smile. “World’s snuggliest assassin,” she said.

 

“That too,” he said and then pinched at her ribs. “Now fess up.”

 

Darcy squirmed and grimaced up at the ceiling. “Whoever left me at the hospital when I was a baby wrote the coordinates on my arm.”

 

Bucky smoothed his hand over where he’d pinched and shifted up so he was hovering over her. She reached up to comb away the dark hair shadowing his face.

 

“You’ve read my file?” she asked.

 

He nodded. That was okay, she’d read his too. “That’s not in it,” he said.

 

“Ah, well…yeah.” She focused on the sharp line of his jaw, the tendons in his neck, cords of muscle over his shoulder, drawing a path over them all with the tips of her fingers. “Jane left and…and I didn’t have anywhere to go, so…”

 

“You think they’re in there?” he asked. “Your family?”

 

She pulled him down closer so his chest settled against hers because the spring had turned cold again  and because the weight of him settled her.

 

“I do.”

 

He nodded, and wrapped his arms underneath her to draw her in. His mouth stroked across hers and she wrapped her leg over his hip, curled into him on her side. They exchanged soft and steady kisses, licks against lips, inhaling and exhaling together through slow caresses, soothing each other down to sleep.

 

_

 

Darcy was half-asleep, walking through Wonderland with the team at her side and a large mug of coffee held to her lips like even the scent of it might help wake her back up. The siren had gone off only an hour or so after she and Bucky and had settled and she’d been prepared to send him off into the night on the quinjet. And then Steve had swung by, which was…not awkward exactly, aside from the fact that she’d been wrapped up in a sheet in the loft and Bucky’d had his pants _on_ but not zipped. So, yes, it was pretty awkward.

 

“Uganda _asked_ for us,” he’d explained. “But they want us to come in softly. They specifically requested that we ‘do the thing where you just appear.’ Is there a Door nearby this?” And then he’d passed Darcy a collection of images and maps.

 

“Ummm…” Darcy blinked several times and Bucky turned on the shower and collected her tac-clothes for her. “Yeah, I can get you there.”

 

It wasn’t the most direct route and she and the team were left sneaking quietly across Wonderland in the dead of night, passing some of the more unique residents and Travelers, doing some of the more unusual transactions under the cover of shadows.

 

“We should figure out some kind of transport for in here,” Lang suggested at a whisper, watching two lumbering dark silhouettes off the path making sounds like boulders grunting obscenely. “Like bikes.”

 

“Nothing says, ‘I’m here to save the day’ like showing up to an alien invasion slash hostage situation on a bicycle,” Darcy said.

 

“There’s nothing unheroic about finding alternatives to fossil fuels,” Lang countered.

 

Darcy took a long sip of her coffee. “Fair enough,” she said. “I might know some giant cats who would let us ride them.”

 

The team digested that for a minute.

 

“Cats don’t do shit if they don’t want to,” Sam said wisely.

 

“Where _are_ we?” Darcy said under her breath. Wonderland was cloudy, it was very dark, and she was tired and somewhere between sore and tingly after her activities in bed with Bucky.

 

Steve looked over his shoulder at her, brows raised in concern.

 

“It’s just past this little market ahead,” Wanda said, pulling the directions from Darcy’s memories.

 

“Yes,” Darcy said. “Right. High five.”

 

Wanda raised her hand slowly and Darcy bumped her coffee cup against the girl’s palm.

 

“Maybe you should stay in Wonderland while we handle things,” Bucky whispered to Darcy, scratching his fingers into the soft hairs at the back of her neck.

 

She hummed in pleasure and was ready to agree when ahead of them, in the rickety market, a massive and heavily gilded Door appeared on the side of a small wooden structure. It opened, and the explosive starlight that came from outside of it revealed two figures, of vastly different statures, standing in the frame.

 

“But what do you mean we ‘will find the guidance we seek inside’?” It was a feminine voice, sharp and steady, dropping to a comically low, rumbling tone. It clearly belonged to the smaller of the two figures, arms loaded with spindly contraptions and bags draping off her shoulders.

 

Darcy stumbled, and Bucky bumped into her back, arm snaking her waist to keep her upright.

 

“Trust in Heimdall, Jane,” soothed the larger figure. “He has never steered me wrong in my millennia.”

 

“Thor?” Steve called out.

 

The figures in the door turned to their group where they stalled in the road.

 

“Brother Steven,” Thor boomed in delight, striding forward with Jane jogging after him and the Door swinging shut and vanishing behind them.

 

What was Jane doing here? Darcy froze and pulled her shoulders in, trying to shrink and vanish. She felt suddenly uncertain of her welcome, of her place with the team, of what Jane’s reaction might be to seeing her after a year apart. Either at his own sense of threat assessment, or at some physical sign of Darcy’s shock, Bucky shifted until he was half in front of her.

 

“What are you doing here?” Steve asked.

 

“We were given word that a fleet from the Brotherhood of Badoon had landed on Earth. I requested a Bifrost path from Heimdall but he informed us that you had a party en route by the Travelers path,” Thor explained. He scanned the group of them and Darcy ducked behind Bucky’s shoulder. “But which of you is the Blessed one? I had no knowledge of-”

 

“Darcy?” Jane squeaked, clanking and wrestling her possessions as she rounded the group to find Darcy tucked behind Bucky. “Oh my god, what are you doing here?”

 

“Darcy?” Thor echoed, cutting a line between Sam and Lang.

 

Darcy edged around Bucky’s side before he tried to defend her from Thor, which seemed ill-advised, and waved at the pair.

 

“Hey, guys.”

 

Jane’s face became one tangled frown, and Thor stared hard at Darcy for a long moment before grinning wide and bright. He laughed, leaning back into the gesture, and Bucky set his cybernetic hand at the center of Darcy’s back, ready if she needed him.

 

Thor settled and moved forward, placing a hand on Darcy’s shoulder and leaning down to press a simple kiss to the crown of her head. “The Norns have chosen their Adventurers well in you, Darcy Lewis.”

 

Darcy swallowed once, and then again. “Thanks, big guy,” she said in a small voice.

 

Thor patted her shoulder and then moved away, throwing his arms over Steve and Clint’s shoulders, making Steve flinch and Clint’s knees buckle for a moment. Jane shifted awkwardly closer, arms full and bags bumping against her hips.

 

“Do you need some help with-?” Bucky started.

 

“No offense,” Jane said, “But this is extremely sensitive equipment and I don’t trust super-strength.”

 

Bucky blinked. Darcy sighed and stepped forward. “Here, let me.” She took two thin staffs with delicate silver satellites sprouting from the top, and then carefully unburdened Jane of one of the heavy bags, slipping it over her head.

 

Jane rolled her shoulders and exhaled heavily. “Thanks, Darce. You have no idea how many radio-chronometers I had to repair before Thor finally let me carry the gear.” She stopped and found Bucky still standing with them. “Who are you?”

 

Bucky managed to both shrink under Jane’s direct glare, and also bristle defensively, a scowl blooming that Darcy hadn’t seen in months.

 

“Jane, this is Bucky Barnes, Steve’s best friend and - and someone very important to me so you have to be nice. Bucky this is Jane, she’s hard on science, light on social skills, and unless I’m mistaken, running on about four hours of sleep and six pots of coffee for the past three days. Forgive her lack of tact.” Darcy said.

 

“They don’t have coffee on Asgard. They have _tea infusions_ ,” Jane spoke the last two words like a curse. “It’s very nice to meet you Bucky,” she droned somewhat insincerely, before adding. “But do you mind giving me some space with my friend?”

 

Darcy huffed and turned to Bucky, standing up on her tiptoes to press a kiss the corner of his frown. He looked away from Jane and his face eased, studying her expression.

 

“I’m good,” Darcy told him.

 

He nodded and walked ahead of them to catch up with the others.

 

Jane’s eyes were wide as Darcy turned back to her. “Ohhh,” she said. “That kind of ‘important’ to you. Sorry.”

 

Darcy resisted the urge to snap back, and started walking. “You can apologize to him later,” she said.

 

“Sure, sure. So. Explain this place,” Jane said.

 

_

 

“You should talk to her,” Bucky said.

 

Darcy hovered over him, sponging away blood from his shoulder that had been shot through with some kind of spiked space arrow when they’d arrived on the scene. The wound was nearly shut but she was jittery from the abbreviated fight and nurse-maiding gave her hands something to do. They sat on a low wall while Steve and Thor dealt with the local and Badoon authorities who were slowly settling on an agreement that the whole thing was a misunderstanding but, no, Uganda _did not_ want recompense in the form of Badoon war prisoners.

 

“I will,” Darcy said, tucking away the bloody rag into the team’s med bag - because super soldier DNA was still a hot ticket item. She reached for her coffee (Clint had brought her the refill from a little booth down the road) but Bucky swiped it away.

 

“You don’t need more of that. I can see your hands shaking, doll,” Bucky said.

 

“That’s ‘cause my boyfriend got shot in front of me,” Darcy said, growling and reaching across him for the coffee mug.

 

“Really? Cause when it happened you said ‘Why didn’t you duck, dumbass?’” Bucky said, smile spreading across his lips.

 

Darcy huffed and gave up on competing with preternaturally long arms, sinking back into her seat. “I don’t express panic well.”

 

“For the record I didn’t duck because you were standing directly behind me,” he said.

 

“I know.” She set her hand down on the wall, resting it against his. The sun was starting to come up, burning everything up with a yellow glow, the damp chill of the air turning warm and sticky.

 

“You know how you can thank me?” he asked. Darcy rolled her eyes and he continued, “By going over there and talking to your friend.”

 

“Bucky.”

 

“Darcy. You two worked well together. She actually listened to _you_ . The two of you are the reason that no one got hurt.” He bumped against her before she could correct him because _he_ had gotten hurt. “Seriously hurt. Also, you’re avoiding it so I figure that means it’s probably really bothering you.”

 

“I thought Wilson was our group therapist?” Darcy mused.

 

“Do I need to bring him into this?”

 

“You wouldn’t!”

 

Bucky paused and then grimaced. “No, probably wouldn’t.”

 

She laughed and some of the burn of energy and anger rattling in her chest escaped with the sound. She hopped down from the wall and turned to level Bucky with what she was pretty sure was a very heated look if the startled interest in his eyes was anything to go by.

 

“I plan our next Wonderland date and it’s a deal,” she said.

 

“Deal,” he said. “We going to the hill?”

 

He looked surprisingly hopeful and she filed that away for later, shaking her head. “More private. And mutual.”

 

He grinned, wetting his bottom lip, and his eyes crinkled in the way that always made her want leave kisses at their corners. It was enough to have her strutting over to where Jane was disassembling the ‘Ectosonic Stimulation Mechanism’ that incapacitated the Badoon earlier. (“Wait...it’s like a fancy bell?” Darcy asked after Jane explained what it did. Jane had answered, “It’s a very specific tone of … yeah. Basically.”)

 

“She misses you,” Wanda whispered to Darcy as they passed each other.

 

That felt nice to know, Darcy realized, squaring her shoulders.

 

“Jane,” Darcy said. She squatted down next to the woman and dug through one the bags, pulling out the monkey wrench Jane had been searching her pockets for.

 

“Oh! Thanks,” Jane said. She went to work on the bolts that looked somewhere between ornamental and functional.

 

“Asgard’s making you some pretty fancy gear,” Darcy said nodding toward the engraved vines crawling up a support pole.

 

“Mmm, yeah, they like their aesthetics,” Jane said with a cursory glance at her machine. “I’m still taking back contraband.” She flipped back the cover of another bag, revealing several spools of duct tape.

 

“Life essentials,” Darcy said.

 

Jane smiled and hid the tape away again with a glance over her shoulder. “So, you work with Avengers now?”

 

“Ha! Don’t call them that. Steve’s got a thing about it. But, yeah, I guess. I open Doors. Write some code. Just little stuff.”

 

Jane snorted and went aggressively for the bolts at the heart of the pyramid shaped instrument. Darcy sat up and held poles in place before the whole thing collapsed down on the scientist. She watched as a man rode a bicycle, with a towering display of pineapples strapped to the front, up the road to where a crowd had gathered to inspect the spaceship pod thing and greet the now docile aliens. (Aliens that looked, to Darcy at least, very reminiscent of the trolls in Harry Potter, loin cloth and all.) Lang jogged over to the bike, studied the fruit tower with open-mouthed joy written, and bought an armload, tucking the last under his chin.

 

“How does he think he’s gonna carry those back?” Darcy wondered aloud.

 

Jane huffed, and fluffed her hair out of her face, catching Darcy’s eye and glaring, making the younger woman startle in place.

 

“You don’t ‘just,’ Darce. You never _just_ . You _and_ . You do data entry _and_ code programs _and_ repair machinery _and_ make sure I don’t starve or die of sleep deprivation. You write software that exceeds global government’s monitoring capabilities _and_ open portals to a transitional dimension that even Asgardians don’t fully understand the limitations of.”

 

“Okaaaayy, why do you sound so angry with me?” Darcy asked.

 

“Why are you angry with me?!” Jane yelled back, ripping one of the poles out of Darcy’s hand and tossing it to the ground.

 

“You’re gonna break that,” Darcy said.

 

“That’s why I bought the duct tape!” Jane answered.

 

“I’m mad because you left me behind,” Darcy snapped, turning to face her. “Duh! How are you missing that? You gave me barely any warning and you didn’t tell me when you were coming back and I had no way of even - even - even just _talking_ to you while you were gone. Like it wasn’t a big deal that we just…weren’t gonna be together. Ugh! I have dust in my eye, this is dust.” She wiped at her eyes… which were dusty. The wetness was definitely not an emotional response.

 

“You hated the work we were doing,” Jane said, somewhat breathless, monkey wrench hanging limp in her hand and the machinery between them swaying. “You complained about it. Every. Day. You tricked some kid into being your intern so you wouldn’t have do anything but make sure I had sandwiches and coffee and pop tarts.”

 

“Well yeah, I’m not a fucking astrophysicist Jane, but I liked hanging out with you!”

 

“Wha…?”

 

Darcy squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her hands tight around the warm metal. “I can’t believe you’re making me say this. You and Eric are the closest thing to family I ever had. There. Mushy mush mush, I love you. You left.”

 

She heard Jane sigh and then breath out, “Shit.”

 

Darcy opened her eyes to study her lap, blinking back tears as Jane unscrewed the last two bolts and pulled the poles out of Darcy’s hand before setting them to the ground. Darcy moved to get up and go back to Bucky to lick her wounds, but Jane’s thin hand wrapped around her wrist. Darcy glanced at her and found Jane’s eyes scanning over her, lips frowning.

 

“You’re my sister too,” Jane said. “Mushy mush mush.”

 

“So mushy,” Darcy said, frowning and settling back onto the dry earth next to Jane.

 

They sat in silence together, watching Lang try to convince Natasha to help him carry the pineapples, and the Badoon load themselves into their pod-ship like a cast of clowns into one of those miniature cars.

 

“I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to be around you,” Jane said, leaning into Darcy’s side. “I left, well I left because of Thor and science, yeah. But I didn’t bring you with me because you _really_ needed to go figure out what _you_ wanted to do. Family does that for each other. It’s why a lot of people don’t like theirs. And I asked Heimdall about you every day. Asshole would only tell me you were ‘thriving.’”

 

Darcy snorted and rested her head against Jane’s. Jane reached over and patted Darcy’s knee.

 

“And look!” Jane said. “He was right. You’re on a team of superheroes, you have a seriously intense looking super soldier who is staring at me like I just set his puppy on fire for making you cry, and you open portals to a transitional dimension.”

 

“You have so many questions about that.”

 

“I do!”

 

“You know I don’t know how it works, right?”

 

“I just have to ask the right questions, you probably understand more than you realize.”

 

Darcy laughed and it was a little wet and sniffly but she could see Bucky’s shoulders ease from across the street.

 

“Love you, Darce.”

  
“Mushy mush mush.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are nearing the end of the road, my friends. Only a couple chapters left I think. Or at least I have two more sections in my head that need completed so we'll see how long they are. You have all been so amazing and so outrageously supportive and I cannot thank you enough for every little sign of affection you've given this fic!
> 
> If you are craving more Wonderland like writing in your life I HIGHLY recommend reading Palimpsest by Catherynne M Valente. I meant to mention it at the very beginning of the fic because Darcy's tattoos are heavily inspired by the tattoos in Palimpsest but I noticed recently that I'd forgotten. At one point I thought this story was going to be a crossover with Palimpsest but the honest truth is that Valente is a master at lyrical fantasy descriptions and I am just nooooottt up to that level yet. So Wonderland's a lot different but if you're particular attached to those parts of this story I know you'd love Palimpsest. 
> 
> You are amazing! Thank you thank you for reading!!


	9. Bravo. Bravo.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy and Bucky go to the brothel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mushy mush mush, I love you guys!!
> 
> Chapter title from Lazy Lover by Otarie.
> 
> This chapter wasn't supposed to be here but there's really only so many times you can talk about taking Bucky to the brothel before you just gotta do it. This chapter is dedicated to JanetSnakehole who did not beta it (it's unbetaed, sorry!) because she is on vacation, yaaaay! And I just think it's nicer to surprise your friends with a smut filled chapter to read when they have the time, than it is to surprise them with a smut filled chapter they have to edit when they have the time. 
> 
> I usually forget to warn you, but yeah. This chapter is hella NSFW. With a smidge of character/plot development sprinkled in.  
> Enjoy!

 

“What are you doing here?” Darcy blurted out. It wasn’t the entrance line she was hoping for. She’d been planning on something like ‘Hey there, cowboy’ or ‘That’s quite a flat tire you’ve got there’ which, maybe, really those weren’t much better.

 

“Lewis? What are _you_ doing here? How did you get out here?” Tony asked standing from where he’d been hunched over what looked like a cross between a tool box and the rotating computerized closet from Clueless and wiping Texas road dust off his forehead.

 

“That’s top secret team information only, don’t tell him, Darce!” Clint shouted from where the group was huddled, sweating around the Quinjet engine. It’d broken down again after the team had dealt with a ranch of cow-hands metaphorically high on some space-grade drugs and literally high on surprisingly accurate recreations of the Chitauri hover-boards.

 

Bucky stood from the group, staring back at Darcy with half a smile and a nervous glance at Tony.

 

“I came to pick my boyfriend up for date night,” Darcy told Tony with a nod of her head to Bucky in the background.

 

Tony’s eyes narrowed at Bucky’s slow approach. “I’m here to help. It’s what I do.”

 

“Is that what you do?” Darcy asked with feigned surprise.

 

“I’m here to fix Cap’s two-bit Quinjet, which I could easily replace if he got his head out of his…” Tony trailed off as Bucky reached them, adding, “Her taser has a setting high enough to fry super-soldiers like you for another decade.”

 

Bucky’s eyebrows raised. “And you haven’t used it on Steve yet, doll?”

 

“I’m practicing restraint in my old age,” Darcy said, smiling at the way Tony’s face twisted in an effort to not laugh.

 

“Thought we’d miss our reservation,” Bucky said, reaching his cybernetic over her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her temple.

 

“Are you kidding? I traded half a dozen christmas ornaments for tonight,” Darcy said.

 

“Where’s your reservation?” Tony asked, fiddling with a set of delicate looking tools. He had a skeptical tone to his voice implying that wherever it was, he could have done better.

 

“A brothel near Reykjavik,” Darcy said, watching his face freeze. “You probably haven’t heard of it.”

 

“Hey!” Lang said, jogging over to the three of them. “You mind if I tag along?”

 

“Yes,” Bucky said firmly as Lang carried on.

 

“…Not to get in the way, or whatever. It just sounds, you know, cool.”

 

“You better all be fucking with me right now,” Tony said, studying their faces hard.

 

“Hey, what’s that?” Lang said, pointing to what was balanced behind Darcy.

 

“A bicycle,” Darcy said. She rolled her eyes as Lang waggled his eyebrows at her. “Yeah it was a good idea, you were right. No you cannot come with us tonight. Save up some currency and I’ll set up a visit for you _entirely separate from one of my own_.”

 

Tony looked constipated, eyes flicking between the three of them and mouth knotted up into a pursed grimace. He huffed and raised a hand to point hard in Bucky’s face, opening his mouth to speak.

 

“No nicknames,” Darcy snapped at him before Tony got the chance to say anything.

 

He took another breath and rolled his eyes. “ Okay, _James_ , the DNA tests may say otherwise-”

 

“Nope, nope. Tony. You’re not doing this,” Darcy said, feeling her cheeks warm with a blush.

 

“-But if I got to pick my progeny in this world it would be this young lady, right here, for good looks and sarcasm alone,” Tony carried on loudly.

 

“Didn’t you already give him the shovel talk when it came to Steve?” Darcy asked. “Can’t that count?”

 

“That’s funny,” Lang said from the sidelines. “Cause, you know, if I weren’t so sure that I wasn’t getting laid in high school I would have wondered about that too.”

 

“This is really terrible,” Darcy said to herself.

 

“Are you joking?” Tony asked, rounding on Scott. “I mean, come on man, between the two of us-”

 

“We should go now,” Darcy said to Bucky.

 

“You sure do have an effect on people,” Bucky said. He looked at the bike behind them. “You riding the handlebars or am I?”

 

“Weelllll, I didn’t know there’d be an option…” Darcy hid her smile as Bucky looked speculatively at the bike. “I’m kidding. We’re leaving it here. The Door’s only a couple miles away. Let’s run before Clint figures out what they’re arguing about.”

 

_

 

Bucky’d been watchful and quiet since they’d found the brothel in the grove of trees with trunks thick enough to house a hobbit inside. The building was huge with round bulbs of structure sprouting in every direction, housing couples and single patrons. Windows glowed with colored glass and heavy curtains, leaving stains of light on the ground. He held her close to his side when they entered the lobby, Darcy nodding to the woman behind the counter who held a smoking pipe in one hand, a feathered quill in another, a ledger in the third, and a bright violet cocktail in the fourth.

 

It was hard to tell inside who was a visitor and who worked in the brothel. Everyone seemed half-dressed in something exotic and provocative and the lighting was low and warm, covering patrons in an amber cast. Bucky held her hand as they walked together, passing an alcove on the stairs where a sinuous figure danced in silhouette, six arms articulating soft shapes in shadow. The upstairs hall was quiet and Darcy stopped them outside of a deep blue arched door with an elaborately molded brass fish-faced keyhole.

 

“Is there-” Bucky’s voice was rough and he cleared his throat, shifting his feet on the dense carpet of the hall. “We’re not…It’s just going to be us?”

 

Darcy squeezed his hand and twisted the large key - the end shaped the like a chunk of coral - in the lock. “That’s the plan,” she said, pushing open the door. “Anyway, I don’t know about you but my current sexual orientation is ‘Bucky Barnes’ so I wouldn’t be especially interested in guests.”

 

Bucky smirked and opened his mouth to answer as he followed her inside, but the words dried up and his mouth hung open.

 

Darcy had a similar reaction the first time she’d seen the room. She’d asked for one with a low bathing pool, expecting something vaguely Grecian like the room she’d stayed in before. And it was a little Grecian if you took that in the sense that the room was somewhere Poseidon would have been happy to spend the night.

 

The light was soft and mottled, blooming from small blue and white globes that sat nestled in oversized clam shells around the space like luminescent pearls. The pool was central, taking up the majority of the floor space, clear water lapping up the tile shelf of the floor like a calm ocean might at the beach. At the heart of the water a large pedestal rose up, large and long enough for a person to spread themselves over the top with space to share. Everything in the room was made from rounded, organic shapes that curled and sloped into one another. The walls were textured like the pores of coral and on the far side of the room the floor rose up to a plateau where an enormous bed waited, the posters twisted and spiraling up like seaweed floating underwater.

 

Darcy let Bucky get his bearings as she turned to a stool, designed like an outcropping rock, with an enormous conch shaped welcome basket full of toys and bottles. She took careful sniffs and checked the colors, sorting out what seemed safe and familiar with what appeared to be possibly hallucinogenic. She unzipped her hoody and hung it up on a seahorse hook on the wall.

 

“Too kooky?” she asked when Bucky seemed frozen, staring at a hat rack designed to resemble a trident, while she was unzipping her dress.

 

He blinked, found her shrugging her shoulders free of her sleeves, and grinned. “Am I gonna be the drowned sailor to your mermaid?” he asked.

 

She laughed and he crowded up to her, ducking his head and sucking a wet spot into her shoulder and wrapping his arms around her. She sighed and leaned into him, tucking her trapped arms against her stomach.

 

“If you want,” she said easily. It wasn’t really what she had in mind, but she hadn’t really expected their room to resemble scenes from The Little Mermaid either.

 

“Don’t think mermaids can wrap their legs so tight around me it feels like a vice I never want to escape from,” Bucky said, dragging his stubble against the skin of her neck, making her shiver.

 

“You love it,” she said, voice thin.

 

“I do,” he said, gently tugging the dress further down her arms until she helped wrestle herself free.

 

The fabric hit the floor with a whisper and Darcy twined her arms behind his neck as he dug his fingers into the soft underside of her ass. She moaned as he pulled her up onto her toes, rubbing her against his hips where he was growing hard, tac pants pulling tight.

 

“I wanted to wait,” Darcy whispered as Bucky lapped at her pulse, his tongue hot and firm like he was getting ready to take a bite of her. “Give you a bath and…and a massage.”

 

Bucky pulled his head back to meet her gaze and she felt tipsy, the light of the room making everything wobbly and distorted in front of her eyes. He kissed her hard and lifted up under her thighs. Her legs parted easily, folding around his hips and squeezing him against her, her own hips already starting to shift and arch.

 

“Been away from you for four days,” Bucky said. “Promise I’ll be good for whatever you want after, but lemme have you now, doll.”

 

Her back was pressed against the wall, the bumps and dents pressing strangely into her skin as he rocked against her and nibbled at her jaw.

 

“Fuck,” Darcy sighed out and Bucky adjusted them, pulling her panties down her legs. “Yes…yes, Bucky. Want you too.”

 

He pressed a quick kiss to her mound, tongue flicking out to taste her, before rising back up - when had he managed to undo his pants, she wondered - and lifting her up into his arms.

 

“My best girl,” he murmured, and then pressed himself deep into the heart of her, the pair of them breathing into each other in relief.

 

_

 

Sex first had probably been a better idea, Darcy decided after. The orgasm had made Bucky relaxed and cooperative and he’d followed her into the warm water, settling between her thighs with his head resting against her breasts, without any questions or protests. She rinsed his hair with the help of a shell that was floating around the pool. She’d played around with an oil that seemed to make everything slippery soft, starting at his toes and working her way up to his scalp. She scratched behind his ears and he rumbled against her like the barn cats from a year ago. She mussed his hair under her fingers and then combed through the strands, setting them back to order.

 

“Why you doin’ this, doll?” he whispered from where his cheek was pillowed against her breast.

 

“Cause I like you,” she said. It was an understatement, but the words were light and the water didn’t seem to be cooling and she wanted to see how long she could stall his attention from remembering he had her naked and near.

 

He twisted in the water and for a moment she thought that bath time was up and Bucky’d have her begging underneath him again in a minute. But then he pressed his face into her neck and wrapped his arms under her hips, cradling her against him. She scratched at the back of his neck and leaned back against the pedestal behind her so they could float together.

 

“Don’t think I deserve this,” he said, voice almost drowned out by the water teasing at the tiles of the floor and the licks against their skin.

 

“You do,” Darcy said.

 

He shifted, keeping her close, until she was straddled over his lap, arms braced against the cushioned stand behind his head, their faces level. He was avoiding her eyes, skirting around the edges of her face. He reached his cybernetic hand up to smooth away the hairs that were curling in the humidity.

 

“You’re the best man I know,” Darcy said, watching the way his brows twitched with a frown. “And I heard you’re in the running generally speaking too.” She kissed at the corner of his mouth and pulled away before he could chase her for more. “I’m not saying you have to give yourself long baths and oil massages and cozy sweaters and birthday cakes and _very_ enthusiastic sex…” She trailed off and watched him battle a smile before continuing, “But it does mean you have to accept applications for the position of spoiling you.”

 

“This would be the position you’re applying for?” he asked.

 

She nodded. “Yes, and I think you’ll agree I’m a very promising prospect.”

 

His hands were kneading at her ass, creating a very small and tantalizing amount of friction where the lips of her sex were pressed against the thatch of hair above his groin.

 

“Is this a mutually satisfying position?” he asked, raising one brow. “Do I get to spoil my hiree in return?”

 

“Absolutely,” Darcy said.

 

She met Bucky in the middle for a slow and filthy kiss that went on long enough to distract her from the next step in her plan. The tip of his cock prodded gently at her entrance as Bucky lifted them both out of the water and shifted them back on to the landing at the center of the pool.

 

“Wait, wait,” Darcy hissed, scrabbling out of Bucky’s embrace as he thumped backwards, trying to pull her down with him. “My plan,” she said. “You can spoil me another night, I have a plan.”

 

“Darce,” he groaned. He lifted his hips up to bump against hers but she shifted away on her knees.

 

“You promised. And you already got a pass earlier,” she said.

 

“One you seemed to enjoy,” he growled, sitting up. She pushed him back down with both hands and he huffed, collapsing.

 

“I did, you’re right. But this is important. I’m going to battle.”

 

“Battle? The hell you talking abo-owwhhhh!” Bucky twisted below her as she dug her fingers into the knot of muscle on his right thigh that she knew cramped while he was on the field and gave him an occasional minor limp. “Fuck,” he muttered quietly as she swirled her fingers deep into the knot. The grimace on his face was something between pain and ecstatic relief.

 

“I’m taking this fucker out tonight,” she declared, admiring the heave of his chest as he tried to skirt away from her hands. “And the one on your lower back.”

 

He laughed through the tangle of a frown. “These are old enemies, doll. They’re not gonna be that easy to defeat.”

 

“I told you,” she said. “I have a plan. You just hangout there and think about what kinda room you want to reserve when it’s your turn to spoil me.”

 

“That supposed to distract me?” He hiccuped on a breath as she worked fingers into the knot again.

 

“No,” she said, bending down as he clamped his eyes shut and breathed through his nose. “I thought this would distract you.”

 

She ducked her head down, running her tongue over the ridge on the underside of his cock all the way up to the slit at the head, swirling at the pre-come beaded there. She pressed hard into the knot on the back of his thigh at the same time and Bucky arched with a surprised shout, slipping further into her ready mouth. She thought she could hear a bit of the landing they were perched together on snap under his prosthetic hand.

 

“Motherfucker,” he said on a exhale as Darcy licked and kissed and sucked her way back up.

 

She peeked up the length of him, watching his stomach tremble, watching his tongue flick across his lips as he tried to catch his breath, his hair fanning out on the pale cushion. Her fingers soothed around the edges of the knot as she teased her mouth around the length of him, kissing and licking every inch. She trailed the nails of her free hand up his other leg until she’d reached his sac, his skin and hair especially soft after the treatment of the bath.

 

“You’re some kind of evil genius,” Bucky panted out.

 

Darcy pulled him deep into her mouth and giggled at the accusation, making him shiver and then groan and writhe under her as she dug into the knot again. She set to a pattern of soft, gentle, licks and nibbles around his hardness and careful massages against the tangled muscle on his leg, before sucking him deep into her mouth, bobbing to brush against the back of her throat, and pressing hard into the heart of the knot with her fingertips and knuckles.

 

Bucky babbled, legs shifting around her, chest arching and sinking back. He traded praise with threats of retaliative pleasures until he’d fixed on her earlier instructions.

 

“Gonna get you a throne room, find you a crown,” he said. “Set you there and kneel at your feet - fuck, fuck, Darce, _shiiit_ , - pull you against my mouth and eat your cunt till you can’t stop cumming - oh, Jesus, that’s… - gonna have you flying so… can’t think- Christ, _Darcy-_ ”

 

She could feel his balls tightening in her hand, working them gently, pulling just slightly and making Bucky’s speech fall apart into fractured sounds of pleasure. Under her other hand the knot was crumbling and she smoothed it in wide circles before drawing away and wrapping her fist around the base of him. He hollered above her and she sank her lips down over him, letting him twitch and buck carefully up to her face.

 

“Doll, doll, gonna cum, doll,” he chanted.

 

She pulled one last long stroke up to the tip of him, swirling her tongue over the top before falling back as he shuddered and came in hot streams to the back of her throat. She swallowed what she could, let more slip out to clean away later, and retreated gently up his length and off his sensitive skin.

 

She sat up on her knees, wiping at her mouth and smiled at her work. Bucky’s chest was heaving, still dewy from the bath and, if she’d done as well as she suspected she had, a bit of sweat. His right arm was draped over his eyes, cheeks pink underneath and lower lip swollen from where his teeth were buried. His left hand was clutching the edge of the landing, and the material looked half crumbled, like he was holding it in place there more than holding it to steady himself. His thighs were trembling, still braced up and open to make room for her. She cleaned away the mess she’d made with a triumphant smile and then stroked gently at his legs to remind him to relax.

 

He shifted his arm off his face and blinked slowly at her. “C’mere,” he rasped.

 

She crawled over, her knees braced on either side of his waist and his right hand raised from his side to lift and press at her breast. She leaned down and he tilted his chin up, pulling at her lips with his, sweeping his tongue into her mouth to stroke against hers. She heard something splatter into the water and then his metal fingers, cool and smooth, were slipping between her legs.

 

“Mmp- mmph, Bucky, honey, no,” Darcy pulled away from the kiss. She halted his hands and settled back on her knees as he frowned, trying to pull her close again. “I’m not finished. You’ve got to roll over so I can get to your back.”

 

“Not sure I can take it,” he said, left hand trying to skirt around where she was guarding. “You’ve got some tough little fingers.”

 

“Yeah, I watched you heal from a knife wound to a major artery. Pretty sure you can handle a massage, Bucky,” she said, rolling her eyes, and batting at his shoulder. “Besides, it’s the last part of my plan. When I’m done I’ll leave the rest of the night up to you.”

 

Bucky narrowed his eyes, scanning the length of her and wetting his lips.

 

“Morning too,” she said.

 

He grinned, sitting up to peck a kiss on her chin, and immediately began to turn over.

 

_

 

Darcy woke, barely, as hands stroked along her sides and a warm length pressed against her pussy, still thrilling with sensitivity from Bucky’s thorough attentions on the pool platform.

 

“Thought you said the bed was too soft?” Darcy whispered.

 

Bucky hummed, the sound vibrating against her back, and he ran a hand down her stomach to tease at her clit and then lift her thigh up over his hip.

 

“Gave it some thought,” he said.

 

When he had finally relented and declared his gratitude thoroughly expressed, and Darcy thoroughly fucked senseless, he’d carried her to the bed from the pool. Darcy had giggled as he startled, sinking inches deep into the excessively soft mattress. As far as she could tell, in the brothel everything _but_ the bed was meant to accommodate sex. Bucky had grumped at this for a moment before noting Darcy’s blissed-out expression as she cuddled into a pillow. Then he’d settled against her and he’d been snoring softly in her ear before she’d managed to drift off.

 

“You’re very smart,” Darcy said, words ending on a gasp as he tilted her hips just so and slid home in one thrust.

 

“Highly motivated,” he said, grunting as she squeezed around him.

 

She wanted to twist and kiss at his rough cheeks, lick at his mouth to taste him and see if there was any of her own flavor left from earlier, but she felt a bit like she was having sex on a cloud and it was _so_ comfortable. So instead she lifted his right hand from her breast and kissed at the center of his palm. He shifted again, rolling his hips slowly, and found a spot inside to make her see stars, the heel of his left hand pressing down above her pubic bone. The pressure built fast inside her and his fingers toyed softly at her clit, barely grazing. Darcy let her mouth fall open for whimpers and sighs and moans to pour out.

 

“Relax, doll,” Bucky soothed, nuzzling at her tangles to kiss behind her ear. “I’m not rushing. Just wanna feel you fallin’ to pieces round me over and over again. Make sure you’ve got good reason to come home to me.”

 

Darcy’s brow furrowed and then relaxed as the first orgasm hit, escalating slowly, running through her like syrup, sweat breaking out on her skin and chilling in the open air.

 

“Never gonna leave,” she said when she’d caught her breath again.

 

Bucky pulled her back to press against his chest, thrusts shallow while she came down, and went to work on leaving a trail of wet, bruising kisses down her throat.

 

_

 

They stopped at the market on their way back to the Junkyard Door, purchasing several greasy sacks full of stuffed pastries to take back to Iceland. Bucky paid for the food with some antique bottle caps as Darcy watched the bustle of the square, studying the variety of faces.

 

He brushed her hand with his, before tangling their fingers and leading them out onto the road again.

 

“When are you going to start looking for them?” Bucky asked as they walked.

 

Darcy blinked and frowned. “Look for who?”

 

Bucky tugged her closer. “Your parents. I see you watching for them when we’re in here. You’ll have to take some time. Won’t just pop up in a crowd while we’re passing through.”

 

Darcy couldn’t decide where to look, eyes landing on trees and Bucky’s hands and the road, before taking off again.

 

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” she said.

 

“You’ve got a map,” Bucky said, lifting Darcy’s hand up so he could kiss at the black crossroads on the inside of her elbow. “And I might have a couple suggestions.”

 

Darcy stared up at him and he looked back evenly.

 

“Seen a resemblance,” he said.

 

She swallowed. “Me too,” she whispered, and she let him pull her against his side, arm wrapping over her shoulder. “But even if I _might_ know who to look for, I won’t know where. Wonderland is huge.”

 

“You’ll have to explain to the team, but we can afford to give you whatever time you need,” he said, kissing into her hair.

 

“Would you be with me?”

 

“If you want me to be,” he said.

 

Darcy frowned and leaned back to meet his gaze. “That’s not a yes. I thought you’d say ‘not lettin’ you run off without me, doll,’” she said, imitating him.

 

He grinned for a flash and then settled back to studying her with serious intent. “I’d come to be here with you, to be with you while you look. But I know you’re safe here and I know you don’t _need_ me for the looking. Mostly I’m not so sure how helpful it’d be to have me handy when you do find them.”

 

Darcy considered this. He wasn’t wrong. Bucky was the best navigator of Wonderland next to her, but he wasn’t a Traveler and sometimes being a Stranger created a barrier of confidence with the locals. But she would miss him, badly.

 

“Don’t think I won’t be knocking on those rocks if you take too long to come home,” he said. His face was tight, eyes dark.

 

“Two weeks,” she said, and his brow furrowed. “I’ll stay in for two weeks at a time, max, before coming back to base to check in.”

 

“That gives you enough time?”

 

“It gives me enough to work out in one direction from the Junkyard and make my way back,” she reasoned. “And I can give you Lawyer’s number to use in case you need to find me. She’d probably open a Door for you. But use it wisely cause she’ll absolutely take advantage of the acquaintance.”

 

“You been thinking about this,” he said, smiling softly. They were almost back to the Junkyard.

 

Had she been thinking about this? Mostly she felt like she’d been trying _not_ to think of this.

 

“Two weeks,” she said, wincing at the thought.

 

Bucky’s smile faded. “Two weeks,” he repeated.

 

“Do I _have_ to tell the others?” she asked.

 

“I’m sure as hell not going to be the one to swing the axe,” he said as they made their way home under the rusty gates.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait for this chapter. My schedule is a bit hectic for this month and next and my writing mornings are getting consumed. There were two chapters left after the last chapter and there's still at least two chapters left because I didn't realize I was writing this one! I maybe a little don't want this story to end because it's so much fun. But I'm running out of plot so here we goooo!
> 
> Thank you so much for your support! I wish you could see the ridiculously dorky grin I wear when I see your comments and kudos and bookmarks and EVERYTHING.


	10. Chapter 10 - I Set My Course

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI BEAUTIFUL DARLING LOVELIES I MISSED YOU.
> 
> Sorry for another slower update. My writing mornings are being interrupted still and also I'm trying to make sure I gather all the loose ends of this story. Also I just want to say that it's been super exciting to hear from you with your ideas about what's coming next and who her parents are, so I hope I continue to live up to your expectations and no one's too disappointed!
> 
> Natasha's Google Translate Russian has some translations down at the bottom of the chapter. If anyone knows how to make the translation show up when you hover a mouse over it, I will fix that up but for now I'm computer illiterate.
> 
> Chapter title is from Spore by Ramona Falls which is just lyrically perfect for this chapter.

Darcy watched Bucky tossing Nathaniel up to the sky, scooping him out of the air with one arm, the little boy shrieking with joy through the whole routine. Lila and Cooper were chasing each other through the uprush of water on the stony beach. She tucked her hands under her legs, digging her fingers into the coarse woven blanket they’d spread out earlier. It was warm for Iceland, which meant it was chilly by Darcy’s more equatorial standards, and she’d flatly refused to dip her toes into the frigid water.

 

Pebbles scuttled on the ground behind her and she turned to see Wanda approaching. Nathaniel giggled in the distance.

 

“Can you hear my ovaries exploding?” Darcy asked, turning back to watch Bucky demonstrating his newly discovered nannying skills.

 

“Not over the sound of my own,” Wanda said, settling down next to her on the blanket. “I hope you don’t mind but…he is _so_ pretty.”

 

Darcy laughed and leaned into Wanda. “Please. I completely understand.”

 

Cooper and Lila stumbled across the beach to the blanket, hands cupped together and dripping water. They reached Darcy and Wanda and stretched out their arms, revealing handfuls of shells - snail backs and broken oysters and small conch - and smooth stones in different colors.

 

“Pocket change, for you travels,” Cooper announced formally, hair sticking up in funny directions and looking a lot like Clint when he was trying to be taken seriously.

 

Darcy felt her heart squeeze, feeling too tender and fragile. “That is the motherlode! Totally bringing you both super-cool presents back. Thank you.”

 

“Just be safe,” Lila said, spreading her collection out over the blanket and subtly tucking a pretty pink shell back into her palm. She half-smiled for a moment and then darted forward to wrap thin, strong arms around Darcy’s neck and shoulders.

 

“Absolutely,” Darcy said, rubbing the girl’s back. “Safe as can be.”

 

“Can we go back and see if there’s lunch?” Cooper asked.

 

“I want french toast,” Lila said, loud and unfortunately close to Darcy’s ear.

 

“Yeah, go ahead.”

 

Lila was off like a shot, sending Darcy’s hair in all directions as she whipped out of the embrace and off to the old slick stairs that led up the cliff to the base. Cooper called and ran after her, scattering stones in his wake.

 

“Is Laura still mad at me?” Darcy asked Wanda.

 

Wanda tucked a wave of hair out of her face and pursed her lips. “She’s not mad. Just worried. We’re all only worried.”

 

“Look I know I sort of intimidated Steve about what could happen in there but it’s really not that-”

 

“It’s not you Traveling alone we worry for,” Wanda said. “It’s when you meet your parents.”

 

Not _if_ , Darcy noted. _When_. Which made her pause long enough for Wanda to continue.

 

“I came to let you know that Natasha just landed,” Wanda said and smiled as Darcy winced. “Steve went to meet her and Lang went too so…”

 

Darcy groaned.

 

She had announced her plans to the team the week before. (All but Natasha who’d left on a ‘diplomatic errand’ of some kind.) Well, Wanda had announced the plans as Bucky had passed out breakfast pastries from Wonderland. She had taken one look at Darcy’s solemn face and, in surprise, had said, ‘You’re leaving.’ A pause had followed, where the room turned slowly to stare with Darcy with open expressions that grew wounded with every passing second, and an uproar followed.

 

As the conversational dust settled the sides were drawn. Wanda, Clint, and Sam were supportive. Laura, Steve and Lang were ‘concerned.’ Or at least Laura and Steve were concerned, to the point where Steve seemed genuinely distraught with Bucky for being willing to let Darcy make the journey alone. Lang was…being a bit of a troll, really. As far as she could tell he wasn’t worried for her, but every time the subject settled into the background Lang brought it back to light with a new and increasingly absurd argument, ruffling Steve and Laura’s feathers all over again.

 

And if he was going to tattle on her to Natasha then Darcy wasn’t sure about her odds in explaining the decision to the Black Widow.

 

“It will be alright,” Wanda soothed. Bucky joined them on the blanket, Nathaniel bouncing on his shoulders. “I think Natasha will understand your decision.”

 

“The little spider won’t bully you, doll,” Bucky said.

 

Darcy and Wanda shared a look. They had seen Natasha give orders to every member of the team with a quick phrase and a firm look, Bucky included. If he thought he’d been _volunteering_ for sewage duty all these months, well, Darcy had news for him. Wanda’s head flicked to the side, eyes distant, and Darcy knew she’d caught onto a new emotional thread nearby.

 

“She’s on her way. Let me take him back for lunch,” Wanda said, reaching out for Nathaniel who had started gnawing on one of Darcy’s stones. Bucky passed the boy over his head and into Wanda’s hands. The girl stood, brushing a light hand over Darcy’s shoulder with a murmur of, “Good luck.” Then she headed to the stairs with Nathaniel settled on her hip. A flicker of red and black descended along the dark wall of the cliff.

 

“She was trained to respect me,” Bucky whispered, with a kiss to her cheek, “I’ll keep her in line.”

 

Darcy looked over her shoulder to see the redhead approaching, hair whipping in the wind like flames, and bit her lip to hold in her thoughts regarding Bucky’s authority. Natasha reached them in another minute, standing at the edge of the blanket and studying them, Bucky’s hand holding Darcy’s and his thumb rubbing soft circles into her palm.

 

“Уходи, идиот,” Natasha said, eyes narrowed down at Bucky.

 

“Natalia,” Bucky said, startling Darcy with the hard edge in his voice.

 

“Я поддерживаю ее. Теперь уходите, пока я не сломаю вашу руку.”

 

Bucky glanced at his right arm and then stared back at Natasha. “It’ll heal,” he said and Darcy raised her eyebrows.

 

“Металлический,” Natasha said flatly, eyeing his cybernetic.

 

Bucky sighed and rolled his eyes before dropping Darcy’s hand and pressing a second kiss to her cheek. “Okay. It’ll be fine,” he said to her before adding to Natasha, “Be _nice_.”

 

Darcy couldn’t decide whether to laugh or complain and watched her supposed hero boyfriend retreat back to the base. She turned to the other woman as Natasha folded gracefully down onto the blanket.

 

“It’s not fair pulling the Russian card,” she said.

 

“I didn’t want you to hear me emasculate him,” Natasha said with a quick shrug, crimson sweeping over her shoulder. “Why do you want to find your parents?”

 

Darcy blinked and wondered how a woman trained in espionage and seduction could manage to be so blunt most of the time. She looked down at the pile of gifts from the Barton kids, and let herself sort through the colors while she gathered her thoughts. A pile of blues, an ombre of pinks to browns to golds, three lovely ivory shells with pastel smears inside.

 

“I want to know who made me,” she answered eventually. “I want to see the parts of their face that make my face.”

 

This seemed to make Natasha pause and Darcy could see behind her guarded expression the new route she searched for in the conversation. “You have a family here,” Natasha said.

 

Darcy opened her mouth to answer but found her throat shut tight, her eyes burning. She swallowed and tried again. “I know that.” Natasha’s shoulder dropped a fraction and her gaze settled on the restless shoreline so Darcy continued. “I’m not going for a reunion. Or for parent figures. I just…I…I spent a lot of time as a kid imagining that it was an accident. That I wasn’t meant to be left alone at the hospital. That there were people looking for me.”

 

Darcy watched Natasha’s face fall open, fixed to the sea, something softening in the lines. “I spent so much time telling myself that I was separated from my parents by chance instead of choice. By the time I was old enough to understand _why_ someone might not be able to take care of their own kid, I’d convinced a part of myself I had long lost parents crying over me. I just want to let go of that. And to say hello. And I guess forgive them, for myself at least.”

 

She gnawed softly at the inside of her cheek. That was truth wasn’t it? Had she known that before saying it? The roar of the waves against the beach filled the silence that followed. Darcy wondered what stories a little Natasha had told herself about her family after arriving at the Red Room.

 

“You know where to start?” Natasha asked.

 

“I think I know who I’m looking for,” Darcy said.

 

Natasha nodded and lifted herself up off the blanket. “Don’t take too long. I haven’t told the others yet, but I don’t think we’ll be in Iceland for much longer.”

 

“Is it compromised?” Darcy asked, scrambling to follow.

 

Natasha smiled. “No, but I think we’ll get a better offer soon. Don’t say anything. I want to enjoy Steve’s confusion fully.”

 

_

 

Darcy hummed against Bucky’s mouth, catching her breath with little abbreviated gasps as she settled and relaxed. He kissed below her earlobe and she pressed her face into his shoulder to hide her sex-drunk grin.

 

“How am I supposed to leave this morning if my legs don’t work?” she mumbled into his skin.

 

The sky was pinking outside and she’d slept in small lulls throughout the night before one or the other of them interrupted rest for touching.

 

“Just want to see you off nicely,” he said between kisses on her throat that made the tingling warmth in her core pulse pleasantly.

 

“You said that last night,” she said.

 

He took a deep breath against her skin and then turned his face away. She ran her fingernails over the back of his neck and made him shiver.

 

“Are you hiding?” she asked, surprised. It had taken her long enough to get used to way he watched her, held her gaze when she looked at him, studied her fixedly until she could barely stand to be looked at any longer, and it was suddenly strange to have him turning away.

 

“Been tryin’ to think of the way to say something,” he said to the open room.

 

Darcy froze up in his arms for a moment. Was he about to tell her they were over? Like this? Right after sex? And then she settled and held her breath. No. That was _not_ what this was about. That was not at all how Bucky would go about letting her down.

 

“You’re making me nervous,” she said.

 

He straightened up immediately, turned back to her and took in her jittery expression with soft eyes, hovering over her. “No, no, sorry doll,” he soothed and then pressed himself to her head to toe in a long kiss. “ _I’m_ nervous,” he said.

 

He looked nervous, she realized. He’d been chewing at his lip between rounds of urgent and tender sex, and hadn’t been more than a few scant inches from her all night.

 

“Bucky, honey, I don’t have to go,” she offered. “I love you, whatever you need…if you just want me to stay or…” she trailed off as his smile bloomed, brilliant and delighted. “What? Is that it? I’ll stay.”

 

He shook his head and swooped down for another, longer kiss that had her twisting her arms and legs around him to pull closer. He loosened her hold and retreated, grinning.

 

“S’not that. Been trying to tell you I love you, Darcy,” he said, nearly laughing. “You beat me to it. Couldn’t work up the nerve. I love you,” he repeated softer, spreading the words out carefully, like even their pronunciation was important in the moment.

 

Had she said it? Oh! She had. Darcy giggled, something light and giddy flooding through her whole body. “Oh _that,_ ” Darcy laughed as he pecked along her jaw. “I think I knew that.”

 

Bucky nodded, nuzzling into her cheek and huffing a laugh against the skin of her neck. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

 

She memorized the topography of his back under her fingers, kisses slow and seamless until he was inside of her again, his lips tracing the marks on her skin, her body rolling and pitching beneath his like the tide reeling in.

 

_

 

If she’d been on a schedule, she would have been running late. But since it didn’t really matter when she went to Wonderland she let it slide that the sun was settled high in the sky instead of just rising. Bucky linked his fingers through hers and shifted her small pack of clothes and supplies on his shoulder.

 

“Can I stay in the house while you’re gone?” he asked.

 

“You think Steve and Tash are too loud now that they’re not sneaking?” she laughed.

 

Bucky snorted and shook his head, lifting her hand to skim the back of it across his mouth. “Just wanna be near you.”

 

Unff. Darcy’s heart cracked in her chest and poured out a terrible warmth. She pulled him to a stop in the village square and rose to her tiptoes to pepper kisses across his face until he was laughing, cheeks red, and trying to catch her mouth with his.

 

“I changed my mind,” Darcy said. “You should probably come with me.”

 

Bucky grinned, eyes wincing. “You do these first two weeks and I’ll be packed and ready to go for the next if you need me.”

 

She opened her mouth to bargain, but found her thoughts loudly interrupted.

 

“Jesus, you guys. We’ve been waiting at the falls for like three hours!”

 

Darcy jumped and Bucky turned to glare at Scott at the end of the road, arms lifted in exasperation with a party hat sitting jauntily at the side of his head.

 

“Where have you been?” Scott asked, crossing his arms over his chest as they walked up to him.

 

“Having sex,” Darcy snapped and Scott wrinkled his nose. “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“Your send off party,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

 

“I remember saying ‘no’ to that idea,” Darcy said.

 

“I remember not caring,” Scott said with a shrug, turning around and taking the lead on the march up to the falls.

 

“Is he an essential member of the team, really?” Darcy muttered under her breath.

 

“He plays a very small but important role,” Bucky whispered back, and then waggled his eyebrows at his pun. Darcy groaned.

 

“If you two are about to go back for seconds or thirds or whatever you’re up to for the day,” Scott said over his shoulder, eyes narrowed, “I will send the team in after you.”

 

Bucky twisted their arms so his could wrap over her shoulder. “You’re underestimating us,” he said with a smirk.

 

Scott released a full body shudder. “Dude, stop, she’s like my baby sister,” he whined.

 

Darcy opened her mouth to snap back that he wasn’t allowed to make her an honorary family member if she didn’t want to be one. And then she remembered that she’d always wanted siblings to pick at and tease and argue with and have defend her. And Lang _was_ that. And she did sort of love him for it, as long as she didn’t have to admit to it. She swallowed and her stomach sank.

 

With less enthusiasm she answered skeptically, “Your baby sister that drops you off at orgy hills?”

 

“Best baby sister ever,” Scott said. “My older sister wouldn’t even buy me beer or drive me to the comic store.”

 

“Glad I rate,” Darcy said under her breath, struggling with the realization that she might actually miss _Ant-Man_ of all people while she was away.

 

Bucky squeezed her hand, watching her face shift with frustration and melancholy. He pressed a kiss to her temple as they reached the others, resting in the grass near the falls all looking fairly irritated and bored. And not another single one of them, not even Nathaniel, wearing a little paper hat.

 

“Finally,” Cooper groaned from where he was spread, face down, against the ground. He rolled over and stood, coming up to Darcy and giving her a hug around her waist. Reciting in a bland and rehearsed tone he said, “Bye. Gonna miss you. Pleasebringbackcoolstuff,” he added in a rush.

 

Darcy laughed and squeezed back, promising a load of ‘cool stuff’ on her return. Bucky stepped back to let the Bartons get in their goodbyes and then Sam - a quick fist bump and a supportive smile - and Wanda.

 

“Have you really been up here waiting for hours?” Darcy asked Wanda as they hugged.

 

Her brow furrowed. “No. It was less than an hour,” she answered. “Natasha cued us.”

 

Darcy glared at Lang who pretended not to be listening, and avoided wondering how Natasha knew when to expect her and Bucky leaving the house.

 

“Keep the idiots in line for me,” Darcy told Wanda who blushed and grinned, just a little.

 

“Not possible,” Wanda whispered, moving away.

 

Natasha slid into her place, cupping Darcy’s face in her hand and pressing a kiss to each cheek. “Да́льше с глаз -- бли́же к се́рдцу,” she said.

 

Darcy sighed. “You’re teaching me Russian when I get back, then.”

 

Natasha’s eyes lit up for a moment before she smiled and slipped away. Steve stood shuffling behind her, frowning at the ground.

 

Darcy buried a laugh. “I’m gonna be fine, Steve.”

 

He huffed and moved forward, scooping Darcy up in a quick hug. “I know. Be careful with yourself anyway.” Then, very, very quietly he whispered, “You’re important to him. To all of us.”

 

Darcy blinked rapidly and patted Steve on the back as he released her. Bucky appeared in front of her watery gaze and their hands tangled together again.

 

“Time to go,” Darcy said, voice a little thin. Bucky hmm’d and the others waved and started back down the hill.

 

“Did that punk make you cry, doll?” Bucky teased, thumbing at her cheek.

 

She meant to deny it but instead she said, “Almost. Don’t know why. It’s just two weeks. Not that long.”

 

Her chin wobbled a bit and Bucky’s hand slid down her cheek to prop it up while he leaned down and left a soft, brushing kiss on her lips.

 

“Not that long,” he agreed, but he looked sad too so it didn’t help much.

 

“Okay,” she said, sharper, rolling back her shoulders. “Let’s do this. Lay a really good one on me, James Barnes, and then I am marching myself through that Door. Time to quit stalling.”

 

Bucky straightened and grinned a little. “Yes, ma’am.”

 

“Make it count.”

 

He swept his arms around her back, pulling her flush with his chest and arching over her to set his forehead against hers. “Every time,” he murmured. Then his lips slanted across hers and he kissed her with long draws and quick nips and licks until her breath was short and her arms were twisted around his shoulders and she was melting down the length of him.

 

His mouth traveled over her cheek and up to her ear to whisper, “Love you, Darcy doll.”

 

“I love you,” she answered and pulled away, wobbling in step for a moment before turning quickly to the falls and rushing under their roar and splash. She paused with her hand on the knob and looked back at Bucky, standing stiff and with a frozen expression, something between fondness and pain. So she shouted, “Don’t fall in love with anyone else while I’m gone.”

 

Irritation replaced the pain and his shoulders dropped in exasperation. He pointed his finger at her and answered in what looked to be a very firm tone but was one she absolutely couldn’t hear under the thundering water. She grinned, kissed at the air for him, and ran into Wonderland.

 

Inside was too quiet. Darcy slipped out from behind the large table and found that things in the Junkyard were shifting. The dolls were gone, replaced by a scene of trees made from hat stands and floor lamps and coat racks, with nests of scarves in their branches full of little marbles and glittering rings and little tufts of lint. She turned in step, looking for a path.

 

“There you are.”

 

Darcy jumped and spun around and Curly Gray appeared from behind a three-headed lamp, brushing a trailing scarf out of her way. _Mission accomplished_ , Darcy thought in surprise, her stomach flipping.

 

“Did you bring one of those big handsome ones with you?”

 

“Huh? Oh, uh, no. Just me,” Darcy said. She was about to offer to call for them. Bucky was at least near enough to hear her, and certainly handsome and big enough for whatever needed doing.

 

“That’s alright,” Curly Gray said breezily. “Mostly need you. Come on. Your friends are in trouble.”

 

“What?!” A cold shock of fear ran down her back but Curly Gray was already weaving away into a path of pillow brick walls. Darcy ran after the older woman, nearly knocking over a coat rack. “What do you mean? What’s happened?”

 

It couldn’t be the team, could it? She had just left them, all walking safely back to the base. Was something coming for them? Or Jane! Were Jane and Thor in here, in trouble?

 

“We’ve got a bad egg roaming around, is all,” Curly Gray said over her shoulder from a few yards ahead. “Happens sometimes. We handle it. But it’ll be good to have you.”

 

“Me?” She skipped over the tops of suitcases after Curly Gray, trying to catch some drift of the problem and also sorting out the path they were on for the way home.

 

“You know, because of the crown thing,” Curly Gray said.

 

“The crown thing?” Darcy couldn’t remember a crown thing. Then her breath caught in her throat and she remembered the dance in front of the bonfire, the night she first kissed Bucky. “ _The crown thing?_ The crown you put on my head thing? The _symbolic_ crown thing?”

 

“Don’t get excited,” Curly Gray said flatly. “Doesn’t mean much to many.”

 

“You are a living riddle!” Darcy accused and Curly Gray laughed.

 

“I’ll explain it slowly to you later,” Curly Gray said and Darcy could hear the smirk in her voice. “Just think before you speak because where it counts people will listen.”

 

“Cool,” Darcy snapped. “I feel _super_ prepared now. That made _so_ much sense.”

 

“Good,” Curly Gray said, still smiling. “Here we are.”

 

They left the Junkyard through a swinging iron gate that looked like it’d once been a garden tea table, and Darcy realized she was somewhere new. There was a brick square ahead of them, full of every variety of person she had seen in Wonderland, all paused and gathered together, frowns on their faces. Spreading out from the far end of the square was an actual town, buildings made of clay and stone and proper wooden boards, nearly ‘normal’ by her standards. At the heart of the square a man, dressed in wildly embroidered robes, with sallow skin shining with sweat and inky hair twisting high above his head, presented a variety of cages sitting on the back of wagons, each housing an enormous cat. The crowd shifted around the man, faces suspicious but wary as he searched for a path through the ring of people, cats grumbling and growling in the cages.

 

“Hey!” Darcy shouted, running ahead of Curly Gray and through the crowd who slipped to the side to give her room. “Hey, asshole, what are you doing with those cats?”

 

Felix and Garfield yowled to her through heavy iron cages. Another, a fluffy gray tabby with tufted ears, hissed and arched it’s back at the man, scuttling into the corner of its cage. (Darcy mentally dubbed it Mrs. Norris immediately.) Behind her she could hear Curly Gray calling “Hold on, Honey.”

 

“Dickweed,” Darcy said, stopping in front of the pale man who reared back from her and stared  with eyes like flat gray stones. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

 

He squinted at her for a moment before answering with a slow and heavy tongue, like he knew in theory how to say the words but had never tried before. “They are meat, and good pelts, and an oddity. I will sell them at home.”

 

Darcy stared back. “You’re a Stranger?”

 

He flicked his robe to the side and lifted a pant leg, revealing a small, isolated spread of black lines on his shin, at little black square at the center.

 

“He’s new here,” Curly Gray said, pulling up to Darcy’s side.

 

The man’s eyes flicked between them. “There are not many Doors on Niflheim. I have searched my life for my birthright.”

 

“Yeah, cool, I get that,” Darcy said nodding, and then lifted a hand to gesture to the cages. “Those are not your birthright. Let them out right now.” The crowd shifted closer and Darcy heard a rumble of agreement that made the swishing, bubbling, unease in her gut settle slightly.

 

“There are not laws here,” he said, stepping closer to her.

 

He was tall and narrow and he probably had a few tricks up his sleeves. But he didn’t get self-defense tips from the Black Widow and he didn’t have an overprotective boyfriend who had tucked a small collection of knives into discreet places after getting dressed that morning. Or at least, she assumed he didn’t.

 

“I’m not talking about laws,” Darcy said cooly, not backing away and tipping her chin up. “I’m telling you that I am not letting you walk through a Door with these cats.”

 

A group of young women with gold feather circlets in their hair stepped forward from the ring around the square and walked up to the wagons.

 

“This is a useless argument. The cages are spelled,” the man growled. “You cannot open them. Let me through, they’re only beasts.”

 

“They are Her beasts,” the youngest woman, almost a girl, said. “And we are Vanir. We can unspell your cages.”

 

 _My beasts?_ Darcy wondered, but without knowing why suspected that the young woman hadn’t been speaking about her.

 

With soft, airy flutters of their hands that left bright streaks in the air, the women set to work. The Niflheim man rounded on them, but before he could take a step an enormous blue figure covered in dark ridged patterns and with wide shocking red eyes snuck up at his back and clasped his wrists together in large blue hands. The man hissed and stiffened straight like an arrow and the giant pulled his hands away revealing a pair of icy shackles wrapped around pale white wrists.

 

 _That_ , Darcy realized, staring back at the red eyes now focused on her, _is a Frost Giant._ She had never seen a Frost Giant before but she’d heard enough about them from Thor. And he’d talked about the Vanir and maybe Nifflerland too or whatever the pasty guy had called it. She was starting to wish she’d asked Thor more about Wonderland the last time she’d seen him.

 

“What are the consequences?” rumbled a voice like rock-fall out of the Frost Giant.

 

Darcy flicked her gaze to Curly Gray who looked back at her with one brow raised and a barely there quirk to her mouth.

 

 _Think before you speak_ , Darcy reminded herself.

 

And for a moment all she could think of were the inhumane punishments doled out throughout history she’d learned about during her poli-sci degree. And she didn’t want to use _those_ ideas. The man from Niflheim was paling and the skin around his ice imprisoned wrists looked red and near blistering with the cold. His stony eyes were searching the audience in the square for some ally, and the crowd was fixed on Darcy. Who was beginning to _really_ wonder about what Curly Gray had left out of description when she’d _symbolically_ passed that crown over at the bonfire party.

 

“Escort him out of a Door,” she found herself saying.

 

The Frost Giant in front of her looked unimpressed.

 

“One he can’t open,” she added, and the giant’s grin was sharp with fangs. But the rest of the square seemed satisfied too, a few shrugging and turning away to go about their day again.

 

“Jotunheim will be happy to host a Traveling guest,” the giant growled, one fist wrapping around the shackles and tugging the man along, pained and frustrated grunts following the Jotun’s heavy footsteps across the bricks.

 

A loud creak released from the metal cage and wall swung down, clanging loudly on the bricks. Garfield grumbled and purred, leaping out of his confines and padding around the young women still spell-working to come and head-butt Darcy, nearly knocking her into Curly Gray.

 

“Did I just kill that man?” Darcy whispered. What would she do about it if she had?

 

“No,” Curly Gray said, almost smiling. “He won’t enjoy his visit, but I hear they respect Travelers so he won’t be harmed. It’s a light punishment, but it’s fair. Not bad for a first try. He’ll be back of course. Whenever he can bribe travel back to his own world.”

 

“You think he’ll be a problem again?” Darcy asked, giving in to Garfield’s demanding engine purr in her ear and reaching up to scratch at the furry orange chin.

 

“That’s up to him,” Curly Gray said with a shrug. “We’ll deal with it at the time.”

 

Darcy couldn’t tell if she meant ‘we’ as in the people who lived in Wonderland or ‘we’ as in herself and Darcy.

 

“I need you to explain to me exactly what that ceremony meant,” Darcy said, looking firmly into Curly Gray’s eyes, which she noticed were a little greener than her own.

 

“Sure, sure,” Curly Gray said, nodding, but already turning away. “But do you mind running a few more errands with me? You look like you actually prepared to be here, this time.”

 

Darcy shrugged and her backpack rustled behind her. She dodged a bristly lick from Garfield and huffed, following Curly Gray just a few steps behind.

 

“I’m serious,” Darcy said. “I want answers. Like…am I…you know…?”

 

“You are not the _Queen_ ,” Curly Gray sighed. “Mostly. Come on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natasha's quotes-  
> 1\. Go away, idiot.  
> 2\. I support her. Now leave, before I break your good arm.  
> 3\. The metal one.
> 
> 4\. Farther from the eye -- closer to the heart (basically absence makes the heart grow fonder, but prettier cause it's a literal translation.)
> 
> Speaking of closer to the heart. You all are. Closer to my heart. MUSH MUSH. I am just full of warmth with everyone's responses and I just...*flails*
> 
> Four more scenes that I know of. We'll see what that turns into, chapter wise!


	11. Chapter 11 - I'll Think of Your Smile, I'm in Love With Your Teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's happening, IT'S HAPPENING!!! Last chapter!! OMG. I can't believe I wrote this story. I can't believe you all came and read it. I didn't know what I was going to write when I started, all I knew what that I missed Ao3 real bad and now TA DA. This story is winding up. I'M SO NERVOUS.
> 
> There's a brief discussion of parent abandonment under the heading 'Only a few days away from two weeks' so be forewarned if that's a painful topic for you. It ends after the _ break.
> 
> Thank you. THANK YOU. For being here for this, with me.
> 
> Big thanks to JanetSnakehole for being my editor and cheerleader and therapist through this.

**That night**

 

“You  _ said _ you’d explain it to me slowly,” Darcy said, jabbing at the campfire with a long branch, watching sparks fly up into the glinting sky.

 

“I didn’t think I actually had to mean it,” Curly Gray sniped around her food. 

 

“If you gave a straight answer I would have significantly fewer questions!”

 

“Fine! Ask a question.”

 

“Are the Travelers here all from the Nine Realms?” Darcy asked.

 

“What are the Nine Realms?” Curly answered, voice flat.

 

Darcy buried a scream at the back of her throat and threw her face down into her lap.

 

“I don’t see the point in knowing much about the place when none of it makes real sense,” Curly Gray muttered.

 

“But you know more about it than I do,” Darcy said. “And you crowned me  _ something _ so I should probably have some kind of context, don’t you think?”

 

Curly Gray sighed and shrugged on a sweater that was unraveling a few inches above her waist.

 

“As far as I can tell there’s a lot more than  _ nine _ places that Travellers come from,” Curly Gray said.

 

“Thank you,” Darcy said crisply. “Do you think you can manage another piece of coherent information?” The older woman rolled her eyes which Darcy accepted as a ‘yes.’ “What exactly happened at that ceremony?”

 

Curly Gray opened her mouth with a sly expression on her face and Darcy rushed to speak over her. “And don’t give me the play by play of the crown and the dancing. I mean, symbolically, what happened?”

 

The older woman sighed and leaned back on her palms, stretching her feet out to the fire. “I passed on the representation of authority to you, that’s all.”

 

“That’s all,” Darcy repeated dully. “That sounds like kind of a big deal.”

 

Curly Gray snorted. “It might be if more than a fraction of those who live or Travel here knew or cared about authority. As it stands, you have the attention of about twenty percent of the population  _ when _ they feel like listening to you.”

 

“How would they even know it was me? Should I be wearing the crown?”

 

“You’d like that, would you?” Curly Gray was smirking.

 

“Of course,” Darcy blurted out. “When I was six my foster family had to forcibly restrain me to get me to share the knock-off princess crown.”

 

Curly Gray frowned and scuffed her feet against the ground for a minute and Darcy blinked, wondering if this was the time to ask her real question.

 

“The crown is for the ceremony,” Curly Gray said eventually. “And for rare and special occasions.”

 

“Do I need to live here permanently?” Darcy asked, something sinking in her stomach. How would she explain that to Bucky, to the team? Would he come with her? It felt too soon to ask. “Is that why you haven’t been through a Door in so long?”

 

“What? No,” Curly Gray scoffed. “Calm down. I just like it here better. Look, someone will find you if you’re needed, which is unlikely. And you’re not that hard to recognize. Pretty girl that Travels with the pack of unusual Strangers? People already know who you are.”

 

“Okay, okay, cool.” She took a long breath and chewed at her lower lip for a moment, trying to come up with a way to ask the woman if she’d maybe left a baby in Illinois before walking into Wonderland and never coming back out again. What came out instead was “So…is there anything I should know about being this…authority figure?”

 

Curly Gray groaned and collapsed back.

 

**A few days later**

 

“Conflict resolution is a very important part of your position,” Curly Gray called drily from where she sat on a low wall made of overturned barrels.

 

Darcy ducked below a meaty, swinging fist before getting the chance to snap back at the woman. In one hand she was holding a large stick (no, Curly, she would  _ not _ be calling it a staff) that she’d dipped in a molten pool of some kind of shimmery black metal the day before. In the other hand she had a bouquet of wildflowers flowers held away from her face because every time she got a whiff of their scent Bucky came to mind and her chest ached and she could almost feel him hovering at her back, hands brushing against her waist. 

 

So instead she waved it in the face of the irate Traveler who’d started an argument with a shop owner - the tent was full of pieces of fabric which were not quite full garments but might cover about half of any one area on the body - in the hopes that he too would be overtaken by thoughts of a loved one and  _ settle the fuck down _ .

 

It mostly seemed to be making things worse. The man was older, deep streaks of gray spreading out from his temples, and square shaped with heavy, red hands that kept punching through the air in frustration. And now there were tears seeping out of his dark eyes as he raged in a language that might have been Italian or Portuguese or could have been from another planet.

 

“Where is the Allspeak when you need it?” Darcy muttered under her breath, shaking the gilded stick sternly at the man.

 

“Oh, for the love,” Curly Gray growled from the sidelines. “Just bop him on the head and be done with it.”

 

It wasn’t the most diplomatic solution, to be sure, but one quick whack with the metal end of the stick on the man’s forehead, and he dropped to the ground with heavy thump.

 

“See?” Curly Gray said, standing up from the wall. “Conflict resolution.”

 

“Your training leaves something to be desired,” Darcy said. 

 

The salesman came out from his tent, bowing repeatedly and swishing pieces of fabric in their faces. Curly Gray accepted several mismatched pant legs and Darcy took a blouse without its left sleeve and half a pink tutu. 

 

“Is transporting bodies another important part of my position?” Darcy asked Curly Gray, staring down at the pile of man who, thankfully, seemed less ‘knocked unconscious’ and more ‘peacefully sleeping.’

 

“It is today,” Curly Gray said with a shrug.

 

**Only a few days away from ‘Two Weeks’**

 

Darcy was starting to feel a little feral. She’d lost the pack she’d brought with her while crossing the Deceptively Wide River. (It looked like a few yards of shallow water until you’d been trudging waist deep for over an hour without getting anywhere closer to the other side.) She was now left wearing the shirt without its left sleeve - which showed off her arm entirely covered with black maps and made heart pang fondly for Bucky - and the half tutu over her leggings which were scandalously ripped on the right side. She was out of trinkets for trade and had taken to performing lousy a cappella versions of pop songs for free meals. Curly Gray, as it turned out, traded maps and directions and information about local happenings for a living.  

 

Darcy watched from the side as Curly Gray haggled with a camp of Travelers - decidedly non-human looking Travelers - for a share of their space by a bonfire and a pair of meals. The group seemed young and were drinking out of a shared ornate bottle. It wasn’t just alcohol in the bottle if their dazzled gazes were anything to judge by. Curly Gray settled the conversation and walked back to Darcy.

 

“I’m pretty sure they agreed to host us, but I’m not sure they’d notice either way,” Curly Gray said, passing over a dish with some kind of roasted bird still sizzling and some greasy and slightly burnt root vegetables.

 

Darcy eyed three of the Travelers who were nuzzling their smooth, moon white faces together, paper thin wings fluttering and stretching into the space around them. Something that sounded like scratches on a chalkboard was coming from their directions, but she wasn’t sure if it was their faces or wings.

 

“This should be restful,” Darcy said, dripping in sarcasm.

 

But the truth was she’d spent the last day and a half at the side of a woman giving birth to a baby that was a cross between a mewling kitten and a small boulder, and with a little food in her stomach she would probably sleep through anything.

 

“You must be missing that muscly one,” Curly Gray said with a sly smile as she settled back against the trunk of a tree. 

 

Darcy nearly fell to the ground beside her. “I am,” she said.

 

“It’s a good place for lovers,” Curly Gray mused.

 

Darcy hummed in agreement, glancing again at the trio by the fire who were now stroking each other’s wing and screeching in vibrated little cries of pleasure.

 

“Do you have one?” Darcy asked.

 

“I have a few,” Curly Gray said with a sharp, cat-like grin.

 

Darcy smiled, and took a few bites of food, happy to find that it tasted better than it looked.

 

“How did you meet him?” Curly Gray asked.

 

Darcy took another bite of food to stall. The older woman had left Earth for Wonderland long before superheroes had become so popular, and before aliens had started attacking. She wasn’t entirely sure how to explain all of that in answer to an innocent question. 

 

“We work together,” she said, finally.

 

Curly Gray smirked. “And what does a man with a metal arm and whole bunch of guns do for a living?”

 

Darcy huffed. “Someone’s feeling snoopy today.”

 

“I’ll answer one of yours if you answer one of mine,” she teased.

 

Darcy struggled to swallow through the sudden tightness in her throat. “He…he saves people. Fights bad guys.”

 

“And you work with him?” Curly Gray asked, brow furrowing.

 

Darcy resisted the urge to point out that was a second question, she might need it later. She shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, I don’t fight the bad guys, obviously. Mostly. Some robots. But I help.”

 

“Huh,” Curly Gray said. “Things outside must have gotten a lot more interesting since the eighties.”

 

Darcy snorted. Her fingers tapped against the underside of the plate nervously and she could barely catch a breath. Her heart felt about ready to pound of her chest.

 

“Your turn,” Curly Gray said with a brief nudge of her elbow.

 

Darcy opened her mouth to force out a question, to ask  _ why _ Curly Gray hadn’t left Wonderland in so many years, almost three decades. Just about as long as Darcy had been alive. But she only got to ask one question and that one was too easy to evade. 

 

“Are you my mother?” Darcy whispered. 

 

Her face felt hot. The Travelers around the fire were thoroughly, and loudly, occupied with one another now and everything about the timing and the setting felt all wrong for the question. But even when the time had felt right, over quiet meals or during long and aimless walks looking for the next task, Darcy had never managed the words. So this would have to do. 

 

Curly Gray was stiff at her side. She turned away from Darcy and set her plate on the ground. Darcy thought she might just get up and walk away, which would be as much an answer from the woman as any bit of conversation. But the woman turned back again, although she didn’t meet her gaze.

 

“Maybe,” Curly Gray said simply. “I don’t know. Probably.” She sat up straighter, like she was preparing to bolt. “The timing is about right, I think.”

 

“I had coordinates written on the inside of my arm. For the Door. The one in Bangkok,” Darcy explained, her body vibrating with the hammering beat of her heart.

 

“Wasn’t me that…He took the- you- the baby outside.”

 

“My father?”

 

“Maybe,” Curly Gray breathed.

 

And Darcy wasn’t sure if she meant maybe Darcy was that baby, or maybe that man was her father.

 

“He’s a Traveler too?” Darcy asked.

 

“He’s still here…I see him sometimes…” Curly Gray’s mouth firmed into a line.

 

“If I was- If I am…why?” Darcy asked. Why leave me? She thought the words as loudly as she could because they absolutely refused to come out.

 

“It’s not a good place for a baby,” Curly Gray said quickly, eyes scanning the sky before dropping to her lap. Slowly, she turned to stare back at Darcy. The woman’s face was pale and lined and empty of expression, of apology. “I made a choice. I don’t know if it was a good one.” There was a long quiet as Darcy tried to find the right words and Curly Gray struggled to fill the pause. “Never been good with family.”

 

“Okay,” Darcy said. She had promised herself that this was how she would accept the truth. Without complaint or judgement or recrimination. But the answer felt hollow and the weight in her chest didn’t ease, only shifted from nervous dread to a bone deep sadness. “Okay,” she repeated. “That was my question.”

 

Curly Gray nodded in short jerks and lifted her plate from the ground again. 

 

In the following hour neither of them managed to eat much food. When the Travelers around the fire finally settled, Darcy sank to the ground, her body aching with exhaustion and a homesickness in her heart that had less to do with Earth, or Iceland, and more to do with Bucky and Laura and Wanda and absurd Lang and the entire team. She lay quietly on the ground, slow tears creeping out of her eyes and down to the earth below her cheek.

 

 

_

 

Curly Gray was gone in the morning and Darcy felt a little ill, and also deeply relieved to be left alone in the aftermath of the conversation. There was a small pouch tucked inside the curl of her arms that had a few unusual stamps and handful of tiny toys that she could use later. One of the winged Travelers passed her a plate with a heap of spongy bread and some colorful vegetables.

 

She left for the Junkyard after the meal.

 

_

 

Darcy rolled a delicate little ring in her palm, watching the face of the white stone shift from smooth white to gray and cratered, like the phases of a moon. She was trying to decide if it was something for Lila or Wanda but her body felt heavy and brain filled with clouds. She wondered what else she could have said to Curly Gray and what else she might have wanted to hear. But that hurt a little to think about. 

 

The stall owner waved her hand in Darcy’s face, and the bustle of the market came back into focus with a blurry blink and a deep breath.

 

“Sorry,” she murmured passing over a little clock charm and slipping the ring onto her pinky. She took a few steps away from the stall to let the crowds make their way around her while she tried to make a list in her head.

 

Gifts. Food. Junkyard. 

 

It sounded simple but it was taking more than usual concentration. Darcy lifted her palms up to press against her face. She’d slept badly the night before, despite the wagon she rented being full of downy pillows and soft blankets. She was feeling the wear of the road on her body stronger now that she was Traveling alone and with no one to talk to. But she was almost back to her Door home to the team. If she could just pick up her feet.

 

Someone jostled against her side and Darcy shook herself moving mechanically over to another stall and scanning the shelves till she found something comically suitable for Clint. A few trinkets later and a pastry that tasted woolen in her mouth, Darcy eased her way out of the market with others. The sky was reddening with the end of the day. She shuffled between the crowd, stepping into the open spaces until she was brushing up along a market stall.

 

A Door opened to her right, gold light spilling out onto the backs of those people ahead of her and Darcy stumbled in step. This was the Door Thor and Jane had entered Wonderland from.

 

“Thor!” Darcy hurried to the entrance and paused at the sudden vision of a towering body, gilded and shining, with two bright gleaming eyes staring back at her. “Holy shit,” she said. “You’re…”

 

Super hot. Enormous. So shiny. Crazy dumb outrageously good looking. Also, slightly terrifying.

 

“Heimdall,” rumbled the giant’s voice.

 

“Yeah,” Darcy squeaked. “That too.”

 

She watched his mouth quirk ever so slightly to the gold frame of his helmet.

 

“Oh!” she said. “Is it Jane? Is she okay? Is Thor okay?”

 

“They are very well, Darcy Lewis,” Heimdall said and Darcy shivered at the soothing tone, warm like a fire glow. “I have been hoping you might pass this Door again so we could speak.”

 

Darcy blinked and Heimdall stepped to the side, gesturing with an enormous sword, to the glittering dome room ahead of him. 

 

“Ummm…yeah. Okay.” She had time. Tomorrow was the two week mark, and while she  _ really _ wanted to see Bucky and just curl up in the frame of his hold and pretend nothing else existed for about a week or so, this was a pretty intriguing offer.

 

So Darcy walked in under the spiraling arches of the Door and Heimdall shut the exit behind them.

 

“This is pretty fucking fancy,” Darcy breathed and the god behind her laughed like rock fall.

 

“If we had time I would show you the great halls,” Heimdall mused. “You could stack all of the Royal Guard atop one another and they would still not touch the eaves. Very difficult to heat, I’m told.”

 

Darcy stared back, open-mouthed, at the enormous immortal in front of her, shining dark in brilliant armor and then burst into laughter.

 

“Oh man. I am super mad at Thor for not telling me you had a sense of humor. I would have directed way more hilarious messages up to you while Jane and I were waiting for that doofus to come back to earth.”

 

“I found your expressions of rage very amusing,” Heimdall said drily.

 

Darcy snorted and grinned, reaching out her fist to the space between them.

 

Heimdall stared down at her offering for a long minute, and Darcy considered retracting the gesture. But then he held out his own, massive, and firm and they bumped softly together. Darcy had to bite her lip to keep her smile from splitting her face in two.

 

“Okay. Cool. So, can I sit down?” she gestured to the steps of the platform at the heart of the room. “My feet are kind of dying.”

 

“Of course,” Heimdall said with a nod. “You’ve had an arduous time of late.”

 

“I have,” Darcy agreed with a short little sigh as she stretched her feet into points in front of her. One cramped and she grimaced, lifting it to her lap to dig her thumbs into the arch. “You been keepin’ an eye on me?”

 

“Your story is one of my favorites,” he said with a teasing lilt. “And I have many connections with you, despite how distantly we exist from one another.”

 

“Thor and Jane…”

 

“Yes,” Heimdall said with a deep nod. “And our Mother, Yggdrasil.”

 

Darcy blinked at that. “The world tree? But…I mean…Doesn’t everyone live in Yggdrasil?”

 

Heimdall smiled and then sank down to the floor in front of Darcy like an enormous golden cat. He unlatched a plate of armor spanning his forearm and then stretched it out for Darcy to see the small cluster of faint, glittering gold lines pooling out just an inch above his wrist.

 

“You’re a Traveler?” Darcy asked, pulling up her own left legging and finding the matching map for the Market outside the Door she entered.

 

“I walked through once,” Heimdall agreed lowly.

 

“Once?”

 

“I am the Gatekeeper. I remain here to guard our borders, by one gate,” he said soberly, with a nod to the Bifrost portal behind Darcy and then back to where the Door had been, adding, “Or by another.”

 

“Oh, shit. That’s so unfair, though,” Darcy said. “Can’t someone, like, cover for you? Doesn’t this job have vacation benefits?”

 

“I am very good at what I do,” Heimdall said, that tiny smile sharp on his face. “And very difficult to replace. Loki was one who might have had the power to assist but he was…”

 

“A douche canoe?” Darcy suggested.

 

“Yes,” Heimdall agreed.

 

“Well it still sucks,” Darcy said, reaching out to pat one large shoulder plate before thinking better of it. Oh well, the guy - god - didn’t seem to mind. “Maybe Bucky and I could cover for you sometime? Like, on the sly.”

 

Heimdall turned to glance at his Door, a brief and wistful expression flickering over his caged face. “Perhaps,” he said. 

 

“So…Yggdrasil is…”

 

“It is Her branches and roots you Travel through,” Heimdall said. “And Her touch which marks your skin as a guide.”

 

Darcy gaped down at her arm, sleeved in paths and roads she’d wandered in the past year and a half. 

 

“Wonderland is Yggdrasil,” Darcy said.

 

“She invites few into the heart of Her. It is a very treasured gift. In all of Asgard there is only this Door, and I am the only Asgardian who can turn the handle.” His words were heavy and Darcy saw as much bitterness as gratefulness on his face.

 

“But Earth has…like, a lot.”

 

“Odin calls it the World Tree’s joke,” Heimdall said. “But Asgard has much to boast of so perhaps She only seeks to balance Her gifts.”

 

“Huh…or,” Darcy swallowed and wondered if she should continue. Heimdall seemed pretty reverent but… “Maybe She’s just kind of crazy.” Heimdall stared at her face, his own blank with surprise. “It’s a  _ weird _ place, man.”

 

He laughed, sudden and loud, teeth sharp. “I know very little of it,” he said.

 

“Well if you’ve got time, I’ve got stories, buddy.”

 

“I have time,” he said, with warm smile and a little humor. “And I can offer good food and a better chair to sit on in exchange.”

 

“Rad, so lemme tell you ‘bout the first guy I ever met…”

 

_

 

 

After several hours of Wonderland stories (Darcy had decided that Yggdrasil was probably cool with it if she kept calling Her Wonderland) and an outrageous amount of hearty food, Heimdall had swung open an enormous golden medallion in the dome to reveal a large nest of blankets and pillows he’d graciously let her borrow for the night. When Darcy asked if the secret room was intended for his own rest or just his special guests, Heimdall smiled in that predatory feline way of his and left her to a deep and refreshing sleep.

 

“So, where are Thor and Jane? I should probably say, ‘hey’ while I’m here,” Darcy said in the morning.

 

“Ah, yes. They’ve returned to Earth. Your heroes are rebanding at Stark’s compound,” Heimdall said.

 

“Whoa. The band’s getting back together? Natasha wasn’t joking, that was quick.” Darcy bit her lip. “Umm…is my…are-?”

 

“Your teammates await your return in Iceland,” Heimdall assured her.

 

Darcy made it to the Junkyard gates by the afternoon, well fed and eager to see her people again. The scenery was new inside, walls of jars replaced with gates of cat towers decorated with paper cranes and feather fans and clay birds. It wasn’t until Darcy found herself curving left against a shelf of mannequin arms and legs when she should have been making a sharp right into a sea of old clothes that she realized the path she’d memorized in the Junkyard had been replaced. She paused at an outstretched hand where the black paint was chipped at the fingertips and the palm was full of seed and tried to remember what she already walked on and where she was in relation to where she  _ should _ be. 

 

“Shit,” she muttered, breath catching in her throat as she tried to stand on tiptoes to see above the refuse, but found herself blocked by distorted interpretations of totem poles, made entirely of stuffed animals with patches and missing eyes.

 

“Shit,” she repeated.

 

She wandered deeper, hoping for a path that might veer right again and deeper into the center. She thought of the route Curly Gray had led her out of when she’d arrived two weeks ago, but she was sure she wouldn’t recognize the right twists and turns even if she could find her way back to the village square.

 

“I will not die in a madman’s maze,” Darcy told herself as she discovered that she’d taken a turn that rounded in on itself and back to a bit of path she’d already walked.

 

Bucky would call Lawyer, probably at midnight when she hadn’t shown up, and the girl would get the team a Door in. Or Heimdall would tell Thor that Darcy was lost somewhere in the Junkyard. And then the entire superhero team could end up lost in the Junkyard and Earth would get into some disaster and they’d all be stuck with broken dishes as weapons and warped vinyl records as hats, losing their minds.

 

Good job, Darcy.

 

Her chest burned with heavy heartbeats pounding too fast and Darcy paused in place, covering her eyes and taking a long breath. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Nobody was catching Natasha Fucking Romanov unarmed and wearing a dumb hat. Everything was going to be fine. 

 

With another deep breath and careful steps forward, Darcy continued in her search. The ache in her feet returned with a vengeance and her back felt stiff and her face burned from the sun, which was starting to sink into the sky and reflect off bits of glass and metal, always managing to shine right in her eyes. Which was okay. Everything was going to be  _ fine. _

 

As long as she didn’t starve or get buried alive before the cavalry showed up.

 

_

 

At nightfall Darcy was sitting in what she now called The Garden, where she and Bucky had seen the man planting silk flowers, snacking on an apple Heimdall had given her. (No, not one of  _ those _ apples, although Heimdall had joked that he knew someone who could get her one. Or at least Darcy assumed he’d been joking.) The sky was full of clouds and the stars were dimmed behind their curtain. She was positive now that she wouldn’t be finding her Door home in the near dark. But the meadow of flower impersonators seemed as good a place as any to spend the night, and with the least chance of an avalanche.

 

She nudged colanders to each side, enough to make room for herself on the ground, and settled back. She hoped it didn’t rain. She turned her face into a large ranunculus, faded from red to pink, and took a sniff.

 

Ugh.

 

It smelled like old socks.

 

Darcy blinked and tears creeped out of the corners of her eyes. She was so tired and so confused, torn between resolution and feeling six years old and abandoned all over again. She could feel Bucky’s eyes on her face warm and watching, could imagine his clean, dry scent. She could close her eyes and pretend that she was in the bar, sitting at a table together with the others, their fingers brushing at their sides while Wanda rolled her eyes from across the room. She could hear…

 

She could hear whistling. Tuneless, aimless, whistling.

 

Darcy sat up, rustling trash flowers in every direction, and twisted in place until she saw him. A tall man with a frame just on the healthy side of skeletal, loping around the edge of The Garden, hauling a full sized streetlamp behind him in a little wagon. His body wove in one direction and then another as he stepped, like one of those silly wind machine men outside of used car lots.

 

“Hey!” Darcy shouted. 

 

Both she and the man froze. She hadn’t meant to call out. She  _ needed _ to call out, she needed help. But her first thought upon seeing the man had been,  _ Not him too _ . He was paused mid-lope, leg raised and out stretched, body folded, and his face was cast half in shadow from the street lamp, one pale blue eye bulging, the other dark.

 

“Umm.” Darcy scrambled up off the ground, eyes fixed on the man who remained fixed in place. “I got lost. And I need help.”

 

He straightened somewhat, brittle shoulders still hunched in, and his face relaxed into a slow and lazy smile.

 

A long silence build between them so Darcy added, “I need to find my Door.”

 

The man frowned slightly and looked around the yard, his long hair swinging across his back in a cross between a pony tail, and one massive dreadlock. He reminded her a little of an old, strung-out hippie. He nodded to himself, and then swung one long, thin arm through the air, gesturing for her to follow him. 

 

Darcy skipped through the field of flowers, trying not to trample any under foot, until she made it out to the narrow opening. Ahead of her the man moved steadily, navigating his little wagon behind him, the street lamp swaying dangerously with each curve and bump in the road. He stopped them not far along the way, shuffling a red wave of curtain out of the way to reveal a full sized wooden door, leaning against an old velvet settee. He grinned at Darcy, gap-toothed and wide, and then leaned forward and knocked purposefully against the wood. His grin stretched further with pride as he looked back at her.

 

Darcy’s laugh was tinged with painful sadness. She was almost certain this was her father, if Curly Gray’s cryptic clues and his matching features were anything to go by. And she was even surer that he would never be able to confirm this for her.

 

“Yeah,” Darcy said, smiling back. “That’s a great door. But I was thinking of the gold one, behind the big black round table. It used to have lots of dolls around it, and then last time I saw it there were…hat stands and lamps and-”

 

His mouth made a little ‘Oh’ and his eyes slid shut as he nodded along. Long, elegant fingers came up to drum lightly at his pointed chin while he frowned.

 

“Ah,” he sighed, and the sound was thin and raspy, more a sigh than a word. His eyes popped brightly open again and he pointed them back in the other direction.

 

Darcy squeezed to the side so the man could push his wagon ahead of them and she could follow. He hummed along the way, usually nonsense but at one point she thought she heard strands of ‘Mellow Yellow’ and ‘Age of Aquarius.’ She wondered if he’d done a lot of acid before moving to Wonderland. 

 

Their route seemed to go on forever and was maybe more spiraling than seemed necessary considering Darcy hadn’t remembered it taking very long to reach the Door after seeing this man for the first time with Bucky. Was he twisting a route together that would lead them back to another old door in a pile of cast offs? They passed a sea of raggedy flags, knotted together and staked to the ground, undulating like waves with every stray breeze. And then a monstrous conglomeration of bones balanced carefully to form a beast with skulls down its spine, and fangs for toes, and a delicately constructed neck that stretched upwards to the sky with an enormous head rearing back, jaws open on a scream. And then a ghostly collection of dancers, little scarecrow structures of clothes on poles, spinning with a flick of wind, sleeves brushing together as they turn.

 

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Darcy asked quietly. Her fingers were digging into her palms, ragged nails scratching at the skin. Her heart was thumping and her eyes were burning and it was  _ late _ now. The team would be worried. Bucky would be wondering.

 

Or what if they were in New York?

 

The man scoffed, or coughed, and Darcy’s panic cleared out of her head just long enough to duck between to dusty old carpets. Her breath caught in her throat as she arrived in a circle of hat stands and lamps, several of which were inexplicably illuminated, and none of that mattered because  _ there was her Door. _

 

“Oh, thank you,” Darcy said, and the words took all the air in her lungs with them, leaving her gasping. 

 

The man tiptoed closer to pat lightly at her shoulder.

 

“Thank you,” Darcy repeated, tears slipping out as she stared gratefully into the mirror of her own gaze.

 

The man’s smile wobbled. Darcy considered throwing her arms around him and giving him a good squeeze, but she wasn’t sure he would hold together under the pressure. And then both of his thin, reedy hands came up to frame the side of her face. Darcy held still, startled, heart thrumming, as the man tilted down to her and his forehead rested against hers, skin warm and smooth. She watched, so close, as his eyes slid shut, and hers filled till all the lines of his face wavered in her sight. He hummed, a handful of slow notes that felt a little like a lullaby and Darcy closed her eyes to cry, shaking slightly under his touch.

 

“Thank you,” she said again, the words nearly silent squeaks.

 

He hummed a little more. His hands were dry and soft and he smelled a little metallic and little like roses. She held her eyes shut, throat tight and full of cotton, as he swept a hand down the back of her hair and pulled away. She heard the squeak of the wagon handle, and the creak of the wheels and when she opened her eyes again he was plodding away, street lamp swaying ominously. Darcy wiped her face with backs of her hands and blew a long, shaky breath out of her lips before marching to her Door.

 

She could see a lamp glowing, beyond the sheet of the waterfall, and a figure pacing across the glow. There was a murmur of voices and the figure froze. Darcy splashed through the water and up onto the dry shelf of ground and before she could even make him out clearly, with three long, heavy steps, Bucky had her in a warm circle of arms. Their faces pressed together, lips landing in the wrong places, until Darcy gave up and turned hers down into his neck, taking heaving breaths that were almost sobs and almost laughter and gathered up the perfect smell of him. The terrible tangle of fear and stress and heartache loosened in her chest until the strands fell apart and her body turned limp in his hold.

 

She peeked over his shoulder to see Natasha staring at the pair of them with barely a smile, and Wanda blushing at the ground.

 

“We’ll see you both down at the quinjet,” Natasha said.

 

Darcy felt a happy burst go through her as she felt Bucky’s answering grunt against her chest, and realized she’d missed the vibration of his voice as much as the sound of it. She reached a hand out over his shoulder and the two women clasped it, tight and reassuring, before letting go and walking together down to base.

 

“Had me worried,” Bucky said in her ear.

 

“Me too,” Darcy said to his neck, taking another long sniff for good measure. “Junkyard moved around and I got lost.”

 

He made another little rumble of acknowledgment and Darcy grinned and then kissed at his skin. He set her down to the ground, leaned back long enough for one full - and vaguely amused - glance at the length of her. They met in the middle for a kiss, both pressing in, trying to capture the taste of the other again, until the familiar ease settled in again.

 

“Love you,” Darcy said, catching a breath, and then adding, “Missed you.”

 

“Missed you,” Bucky said. “Love you.”

 

She closed her eyes as his hands scanned her face, and her neck, and then over her left arm and down to her hands.

 

“We match,” he said, lifting her bare arm up to inspect the new patterns.

 

Darcy played her fingers over his left hand, nails catching on the seams of the plates. 

 

“How’d it go?” he asked, eyebrows raised, like he’d been waiting for her to say it first.

 

“I found them,” Darcy said. She felt some of the raw ache return, felt her eyes sting, and when his hand came up to her face she turned into the palm. She tried to shrug, but it was only a twitch.

 

“We goin’ back in?”

 

“Thought we had a quinjet to catch,” Darcy said. “Heard we’re moving to New York?”

 

Bucky smiled, and left that for a moment to lean in and take another kiss. Darcy fisted her hands into the soft fabric of his sweater, the sweater she’d made him, she realized. He kept his arms around her back as he let them both up for air.

 

“We could take the long way,” he offered.

 

Darcy thought about that, about going back into Wonderland with Bucky, having a few more adventures but with Bucky at her side. It didn’t sound like a bad idea. It sounded like fun…but…

 

“How long will it take us in the quinjet to get to New York?” Darcy asked.

 

Bucky rubbed her back, thumbs digging into knots she hadn’t even realized were there. “We won’t gun it so…maybe an hour?”

 

It would probably only take a day or so to find a Door near enough to Stark’s compound. But.

 

“I could use an hour of normal,” Darcy said finally. 

 

Bucky kissed her temple and she relaxed a little more in his hold. She couldn’t disappoint him either way. “Anything you want, doll,” he said. He grabbed a pack that’d been waiting at the base of the cliff. 

 

She tucked herself under his arm as they walked down to the base, reveled in the weight of his arm, the solidness of him at her side.

 

“Like your outfit,” he said.

 

She glared up at his smirk. “Shut up. Tell me you’ve got something in that bag for me to change into before we see Lang and Clint.”

 

“No m’serious. It’s cute. Should see if we can work something up like it for missions.” 

 

“M’serious,” Darcy mocked in a low tone. “Gimme that bag.”

 

Bucky raised it up over his head, clamping Darcy to his side so she couldn’t jump for it. He laughed as she nearly tripped, trying to climb up his side.

 

“Bucky Ass Barnes, you don’t know what I went through to end up in these. Give me a damn change of clothes,” Darcy growled, trying to twist out of his hold.

 

“Doll, you don’t know what I went through with a bored Lang for the past two weeks,” Bucky said, faking solemnity.

 

“Hey Darcy!!” Scott Lang shouted from the bar doorway as they approached. “Look at you, Tiny Dancer. I’m digging the threads! How’d it go on your pilgrimage? Did you see that girl I told you about? What’d you bring me?”

 

“Jesus,” Darcy muttered under her breath, elbowing at Bucky as he pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. Her grin spread out across her face as the rest of the team came out to the street, bags on their shoulders and tired eyes smiling back at her. “Hey, guys,” she said. “Sorry I’m late.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END.
> 
> I have a collection of QoW shorts in another story on this site called Stuff and Nonsense (I made a series!) which I'll be adding to. It's gonna have a lot of Scott Lang action because he's so dang delightful, but also probably some Bucky brothel action and maybe a Heimdall short cause he calls to me and I love him.
> 
> I also I have a Darcy/Johnny Storm Witch AU (a la Practical Magic) brewing (ha!) in my head. And maybe a Cold War era spy thriller Loki/Darcy but that one's a tall order for me. So stay tuned!
> 
> I love you guys! Thanks again. I hope you liked it. <3


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